


Symphony's Singing

by Gays_From_Mars



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Attempted Kidnapping, Awesome Clint Barton, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Deaf Character, Deaf Clint Barton, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Foster Care, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitals, Humor, Mongolian Characters, Natasha Romanov Is A Mom, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Original Female Character(s) With Superpowers, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Paranoia, Protective Natasha Romanov, School, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sisters, Vomiting, but that's because they can be boomers, gen z humor, they also make fun of Tony and Steve a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 23,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22110553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gays_From_Mars/pseuds/Gays_From_Mars
Summary: Rose wants to feel like she isn't alone in this world.Rue wants to protect her little sister.Natasha just wants a family.Or in which two punk sisters, given to the foster care system for having superpowers, are taken in by Natasha in the hopes of adopting them. But there's another reason why she wants them.Updates when I feel like it.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov & Original Character(s), Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov & Original Female Character(s), Minor or Background Relationship(s), interracial relationships - Relationship
Comments: 61
Kudos: 35





	1. Intro

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello and welcome to my story. I'd had this story idea for a long time before writing it down and I had Rue and Rose's character ideas for months before I got into the mcu fandom. My strong points are world building and characters but I have a lot of issues with plot. This is one of the few times I actually have a plan but it does take a while to establish some things before actually getting into the plot,
> 
> Please be sure to leave a kudos if you like it, as I check up on this story at least twice a day and bounce with joy every time I see another person has read/left a kudos on it. If you see any grammatical issues, plot holes, or something just doesn't seem right, your criticism is welcome. I won't be upset if you think something's up. I respond to basically every comment, so don't get shy and think I won't acknowledge your concerns, because I will and I will find a way to fix it.
> 
> This is probably going to be my longest running story so sit tight!

Apparently, my sister and I had been on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar since we’d entered the foster care system. They didn't want to take in any children, though. They weren't a foster home and they wouldn't have known how to deal with our angsty teen emotions. 

We couldn't tell if our social worker, Julie, was ecstatic or not when it was said that the Avengers wanted to take us in. While we had a better chance at actually staying for over a year, I was also going to be in the spotlight. And it was likely they'd want me to fight. It was probably the only reason they wanted me. Another tool in their belt. Though, we felt that the only reason the state allowed them to take us in was that they were actually looking to adopt. 

The car ride felt far from familiar, despite what the uninformed public would thing. I'd only done this twice before, getting kicked out of a house and driven to a strangers house by another stranger. Besides, this time I wasn't driving to some apartment with two or three other kids, I was going to live in a fucking mansion-tower. A mansion-tower filled with people with superpowers. 

I ran the seam of my torn jean jacket between my fingers, looking through the window and past the glaring sunlight. The coarse fabric felt good on the pads of my fingers. 

Rue tapped me on the shoulder, "Symphony's singing." 

I cursed silencing the deep rolling sound. The sound was an amplification of a specific part of the car's engine that my senses just so happened to zero in on. 

The term "Symphony's Singing" was my therapist's idea. I used to call it rumbling but my therapist decided that was too much of a "mean word." He felt like singing would be a better description than rumbling—even though it was certainly more of a rumble than a song—and it sounded good with Symphony, the name I'd given my powers. 

"Sorry." 

"Is fine," Rue waved it off.

I looked out the window again, recognizing Cafe Centro, a restaurant that my first foster parents loved going to despite its priciness. The wife, Brandy Schucker was also my AP World History teacher and I ate lunch in her class on the days I needed to be alone. I remembered eating at Cafe Centro, listening to her go on long history lessons to answer a simple question. The husband, Jonah Schucker, was the classical guitar professor at Columbia University. He taught me music theory and how to play the guitar.

"There's the tower," the social worker pointed out a skyscraper peeking out behind a few other buildings in the street. 

"Jesus," Rue muttered. 

We'd seen it before—of course we had—walking by with friends, making fun of how rich Tony Stark was, though I never really took as close of a look before then. It was a giant, futuristic looking building that I knew had even more futuristic technology inside. It gleamed in the sunlight, proudly erect and displaying itself for all to see and mocking my anxiety. 

The heavy traffic of midtown Manhattan made the small distance drive last far longer than it needed to. I could swear, even the rushed business men were faster than us. As I watched the tower get bigger and bigger as we got closer, my heart rate sped up and I could feel my face get hot. I wasn't sure if I wanted the car to slow down even more or to just get there already. I was in purgatory, but the destination may as well have been Hell. 

Rue tapped me on the shoulder again, nearly causing me to shit myself. A phone was shoved into my face, displaying a meme. With some tension partially relieved, I snickered at its relatable-ness. 

As we got closer to the tower, we saw a man standing outside, looking like he was looking for someone. The social worker rolled down his window and waved at the man to come closer. 

The social worker stuck his head out the window "Are you Happy?" 

"Yes," the man leaned over to look at the two of us in the backseat, "are these the girls?" 

"Yeah. Where's parking?" 

"Right here, turn on your blinkers. Can I come in?" 

Rue and I made faces at each other but the social worker motioned for him to enter. The man, Happy, clicked a button and the gate leading to the property was opened. He handed us all badges and instructed us to wear them while we were in the working areas. 

After turning into the gated off area and making our way through the unnecessary twists and turns of the entryway, we arrived in the fanciest garage in the world. We didn't even have the time to admire the cars that probably cost a hundred times more than we would ever be worth, as Happy made a beeline for a door into the building. 

"This man has such a gay powerwalk," I whispered in Mongolian just loud enough for Rue to hear. 

She examined his walk for a second, taking in his confident, fast paced strutt that told the world he had places. to. be. Periodt. 

She snickered, "oh my god, you're right." 

"So," Happy broke us out of our mocking as we entered the building, "are you their case worker?" 

It looked like a regular office building that you'd see in the movies. The walls and floor were pure white with electric blue highlights and borders. There were grey chairs in multiple waiting areas that looked like they had questionable levels of comfort, the occasional one sporting a business person waiting for an upcoming appointment. 

We were about to enter the elevator when a woman with a wavy red bob made her way toward us. Black Widow. I remembered joking with my friends about how she's the only girl in the Avengers and how "she either hates it or gets all the dick." 

Rue must have had the same thought process as me, because she leaned over to my ear and wiggled her eyebrows, "whoop." 

Black Widow made direct eye contact with us, raising her eyebrows and smirking, a face that I could swear meant she knew exactly what that small interaction meant. 

"Hello," Happy and the social worker spun around as her presence was announced, "I'm Natasha." 

"Hello," the social worker returned the gesture before shaking her hand, "I'm Robert Newman." 

"And this must be Bolortsetseg and Altan Sarnai," she said, pointing at Rue than me, perfectly pronouncing our Mongolian names . 

"…Just call us Rue and Rose," my sister tried to say politely. 

"Alright," Natasha smiled knowingly before turning to the adults, "let's continue this upstairs?" 

"Sure," the social worker, apparently named Robert, seemed ready to make sure that this actually had a house, not that they'd even get past screening without one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another notice is that if you have an idea and you want something to happen, as long as it doesn't meddle with the plot, it will probably find it's way into the story at some point. 
> 
> Moral of the story: I'm a comment slut. Please comment.


	2. The Tower

"Would you like a tour," Natasha asked once we were almost a hundred stories off the ground, a few bits of paperwork were signed, and the random social worker was gone. She thought it was just as weird as we did that it wasn't our caseworker that brought us. Julie was coming at 4:00.

She nodded. It almost felt like code for a new family to ask if you wanted a tour. Our first two foster families had also immediately asked if we wanted a tour, then asked if we wanted anything to eat. 

"Well, here's the living room," she gestured around her, where we were sitting. Unlike downstairs, the couches were extremely comfortable and aesthetic, all facing a wall with a fireplace. Nothing in the room seemed to indicate that the whole back wall was a fucking giant window looking out onto the city. 

She showed us where the bathroom was, which was just as ultra futuristic as the exterior. Natasha said there were fifteen total bedrooms, two whole stories just for them. Nine of them were taken but for the first time since we were in the system, we weren't sharing a bedroom. 

Our rooms were on the 90th story next to Natasha's and each as big as a master bedroom and each had a queen sized bed. We put our bags in there and continued the tour, which probably contained more stairs than my giant ass school. There was where Tony Stark worked, the training rooms, another floor for training rooms, two dining rooms, a large kitchen, a small kitchen, a fucking landing pad, and far more space than anyone could wish for. 

By the end of the tour, Natasha offered to take us out for lunch and we agreed both agreed out of politeness. The anxiety twisting around and squeezing my stomach made food sound less than appetizing, and I had a hunch that Rue felt the same. 

"Where do you want to eat?" 

We shrugged sitting stiffly in the living room again, "is there anything around here that isn't expensive?" 

Natasha laughed, "you're living in a tower with a billionaire and you're worried about eating somewhere expensive?" 

Despite being offended, I plastered on a smile, "yeah but things add up." 

"Rose, he's a billionaire." 

I was about to make up another retort, but Rue slapped her hand over my mouth before I could say anything, "how about Cafe Centro?"

The smile that made its way onto Natasha's face was almost motherly and it made me want to vomit. Both my previous foster families gave us that smile and I was getting the feeling that everyone gave that look to their foster families. It was the sort of smile you give to a toddler when they're doing something cute but stupid. 

"That sounds good. We could walk there." 

I nodded, "can we get ready first? We didn't really have time to do our makeup." 

"Of course." 

We both went into Rue's bedroom because we packed all our makeup in her bag. We had two palates, an Urban Decay spectrum palate from my birthday and Lady Gaga's Haus Laboratories palate that her boyfriend and my girlfriend—who are siblings and rich as fuck—gave to us as a joint gift. 

We took our time doing our makeup, not wanting to spend time with a creepy ass S.H.I.E.L.D. agent that probably knew what we were thinking half the time, if the rumors were true. 

I went for a smokey look starting at black around my eyelids gradienting into a deep purple. Then, I proceeded to struggle with drawing wings onto my cursed Asian eyes, but they ended up being pretty decent. I skipped the lipstick because I knew it'd just come off when we were eating and my face looked complete enough without it, going to my eyebrows. Ever since I got my brow piercing, I had a lot more trouble getting them symmetrical, but I managed. 

Rue on the other hand went for a more modern punk look, putting green eyeshadow above her lid with a wave of eyeliner cutting off the top of the eyeshadow, then dropped down, moved over a little away from the eye, and dropped down again. It looked like butterfly wings being peeled off her eyelid. She did put on a dark matte purple lipstick that perfectly complimented the green, but that was only because she was magical and could eat without it entirely coming off. Of course, she wasn't the lazy one that didn't want to re-apply all the time. 

"Damn, girl." 

Rue smiled, proud, "I know right, I was like 'I'll just do something simple' and then this happened." 

"You're just, like, that good," I mocked the valley girl accent and we both cracked up. 

I took off my flats and ran to my room to get our shoes that were packed in my bag. After digging to the bottom of the bag, I managed to find my black steel toe combat boots but didn't know what shoes my sister wanted. 

"Rue," I called, "platform heels or converse?" 

"Um. Converse?" 

I shrugged, deciding to just pull out both because they were going to end up in her room anyway. Entering the room, I threw the heels in the closet and gave Rue the old, frayed hightop converse. 

"How do I look?" 

I scanned her. Her makeup was good as always. The patched and lightly studded leather jacket matched well with her burgundy Gorilla Biscuits crop top, but the two together clashed too much with the converse. 

"You're gonna have to ditch the jacket." 

She sighed dramatically, throwing the jacket onto the perfectly made bed, "fine." 

"How 'bout me, how do I look?" 

She swiveled around and walked out the door, "girl, you ugly." 

"Hey," I laughed, running after her, looking for something about her to make fun of, "at least I don't have a mohawk!" 

"At least I'm not ugly!" she called behind her. 

Natasha was in the living room, sipping some tea and smiling at us through raised eyebrows, obviously holding back a chuckle, "are we ready to go?" 

I could tell Rue was biting back a sigh, "yeah." 

The elevator ride was quiet, neither Rue nor I wanting to make small talk and who knows what going through Natasha's head. We stepped out into the hustle and bustle of the bottom floor. A thought occurred to me. 

"Why are so many people working on a Sunday?" 

"National security doesn't rest. Stark pays more on weekends and holidays. Still, there are less people than weekdays." 

I hummed and we walked outside, using a different exit that led straight outside. It was almost like a giant park, but private. The perfect green fields were overshadowed by a gigantic model of the world. I'd seen it before in the news and from a distance while walking on the street, but seeing it up close was a whole different story. It towered over me and I felt like a mouse next to a globe. 

"I really want to run through here," I put up a sound barrier so that no one could hear what Rue and I were saying. 

"Yeah, I wanna recreate that scene from The Sound of Music." 

I sung The Hills Are Alive in the worst possible voice and we both laughed, but tried to make as little movement as possible as to not alert Natasha that we were speaking. Apparently we weren't doing a good enough job because she turned to us and laughed. 

"Are you two talking to each other?" 

Blood rushed to my face and my heart started pounding, we were caught. I took down the sound barrier, "…yeah"

"You don't have to be weird about it, I just think it's cute." 

I bristled, "what's cute about it?" 

Her laugh almost sounded reminiscent, "nothing, it's just everyone's powers here are used for killing people, you just… talk to your sister without anyone hearing." 

I humphed, "you can tell that to our sperm and egg donors." 

"Our biological parents," Rue translated. 

Natasha hummed, almost like she thought she understood. She didn't. What did she think she knew about my life? 

"You know, I didn't take you in for your powers." 

"Then why did you chose us? Was it just a coincidence that we were placed with you? You, surrounded by all your friends with powers?" I asked sarcastically. I knew the answer, Julie had been talking about the Avengers taking us in for a while, although she didn't say which one. She knew we weren't fond of the Avengers but decided to place us with them anyway. 

Before I could go any further, an orb with a brightness that would rival the sun appeared inch in front of my face and started flickering, "GAH! RUE! Stop that!" 

It stopped. 

"Rose, stop being an ass." 

I grumbled, putting my hands in my pockets and looking away. We walked off Stark property and onto the busy streets. Herds of tourists walked in a trance with their heads facing up marveling at the skyscrapers, a few pointing at my new home (though it was hard to look at that and call it home). Teens and college students walked in noisy packs, talking and gossiping about whatever, a few with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. A little girl in a pink shirt passed us with her parents on either side of her, swinging on their arms. The girl made eye contact with me and she did a double take at Natasha then pointed at us, saying something excitedly. 

We didn't talk the rest of the walk. It would have been far too difficult to talk without blocking out the outside sounds, and I didn't feel like talking in the first place. I walked in the back, watching Rue and Natasha act like nothing was wrong.


	3. Cafe Centro

It was only until we were at the restaurant and seated did Natasha say anything. We sat outside at a table for four, it's impossible to avoid a person at one of those. I could either sit across from her and be right in her line of sight or be next to her bumping elbows but be almost out of her field of vision.

The manila folder that Natasha had been carrying was placed on the table and opened. There was a single sheet of paper in it with the word "Rules" printed in large letters. There were no pictures, no large print, nothing that made it seem like it was made for a little kid. Though, I still thought it was funny that she made it look more like a government file than a home rules list. All it needed was a big red "CONFIDENTIAL" or "MIA" stamp on the front. 

It looked like the redhead was going to start talking when the waiter came by, reciting the script with false joy, "hello, I'm Avery, I'll be your server for today. Is there anything you'd like to start off with?" 

We went around ordering our drinks and the waiter left with her perfect ponytail swinging behind her. Natasha turned back to us with far more flamboyance than I thought an assassin would carry. It almost scared me. 

(Was she an assassin? I realized I didn't quite know what she was, just that she was really badass and really good at killing people.) 

"So, back to this," she gestured toward the sheet of paper again, "there are a couple of rules that you need to follow." We sat quietly, and nodded, hoping there weren't any weird ones that went with being surrounded by superpeople. "I'm not giving you guys a bedtime because you can handle yourselves, but curfew is at ten. If you give me a heads up I can stretch to midnight. Don't lie to me, I've been trained for interrogation so even if you've been specially trained in the arts of lying by S.H.I.E.L.D itself, I'll still know."

Rue and I made eye contact. We were skilled at lying, true masters at it, telling half truths and lying by omission all the time and we rarely got caught. She'd be put to the test. 

"Clean up after yourselves, we're surrounded by testosterone and we don't need anymore mess. Especially when Thor's here. If I find out you're skipping classes, your phone will be taken away and you'll be sitting with me or Banner all weekend studying for the class you skipped."

I read the rules as she said them. The next one was no drugs or alcohol and I snickered pointing at it, "this won't be a problem. Our whole thing is we're straight edge." 

She raised her eyebrows, not knowing what that meant and I pointed to the X painted in white on the toes of my boots. It didn't help clarify but she shrugged it off and went to the next rule. 

"I do want you to learn combat skills. People will be after you now that you're associated with the Avengers. You'll have an hour for training with me after school. Outside the training rooms, no weapons or physical violence. Don't mess with anyone else's stuff, especially their weapons. A lot of that equipment is expensive and dangerous, and everyone's pretty protective of it. For your own safety, don't try to turn Banner into the Hulk. It's for your own safety and really it's just a stupid idea." 

"We'd rather not see that. We have enough of the Hulk between the two of us to know we don't want to see the real thing," Rue said, though I knew she was mostly talking about me. 

She smiled, "well, Stark seriously compromised all of New York because he wanted to see wanted to see the Hulk." 

"When was that?" I asked

"Remember when a bunch of aliens came from that wormhole because of Loki?" 

"Oh." 

"Yeah, Hulk scared the ever living shit out of me," she continued smiling, looking like she was remembering the first time she saw a loved one, not the first time she saw the largest piece of angry okra to walk this earth. 

A familiar voice behind me tore my attention away from the assassin, "Rue? Rose?" 

I turned around, "Jonah?" 

Sure enough there was Jonah and Brandy sitting right behind us with three foster kids. The youngest looked around seven and the oldest in middle school. Judging by their looks, they were all siblings. 

We said our greetings in the classic 'I didn't expect to see you here' sort of way. 

"You guys must be the Johnson boys," Rue said to the children. We kept in contact with them since we moved from their home. The Johnsons had been living with the Schuckers since the beginning of summer break. 

"We're Rue and Rose, some of their foster kids from before. I heard you guys are going back to live with mom and dad?" 

The youngest boy, Nathan, perked up and nodded, "yeah, mommy says she got us a big chocolate cake for when we come home!" He stretched out his arms, showing me how big the cake was expected to be. 

"That's amazing!" 

The oldest, Zach, looked at Natasha, who was lingering in the back. He looked away, not recognizing her, but then did a double take and leaned forward. 

"Is that Black Widow?"

Everyone's attention snapped to her, except for Jonah who was looking behind us, wondering where on the street she was. The middle child, Asher, gave him a humorous look, "not there! Literally at their table." 

I would have laughed at the display of pure Jonah-ness, if not for the all encompassing feeling of wanting to disappear. 

Brandy, the talkative person she was, broke the silence before it got awkward, "Rose told me that the Avengers were looking at them for adoption." 

"All the Avengers? It was really just me." she said and I resisted the urge to put my head in my hands out of embarrassment. 

"Our caseworker literally just told us 'the Avengers.' I guess it didn't matter much to her which one if we were going to live in that," Rue pointed to the giant tower in the not so distant distance. 

"Jesus," Jonah said. 

Rue chuckled dryly, "that's exactly what I said." 

"Which one?" little Nathan asked innocently. 

"You see the one with the mouth? It kinda looks like a derpy dog or something." 

Brandy laughed, "a derpy dog?" 

"Yeah," Nathan replied. 

"That's the one."

"Holy shit!" He said in his tiny little boy voice. The two older boys looked away innocently. 

"Nathan," Jonah warned, "watch your language, young man." 

Everyone stifled a laugh, even Natasha, to my surprise. We spoke for a few minutes about things going on in life and Brandy teased me about doing my Famous American project, even though she knew I was further along than most students. 

"Alright, we'll leave you three alone. Good luck with this home, girls." 

"Thank you, good luck with going back home." 

We turned back to our individual groups and Natasha hunched down subtly, speaking in a hushed voice, "who are they?" 

Rue and I snorted, "they were our first foster parents. Had us for three and a half years. We were in a particularly bad place and we were being super difficult. The last straw was when Rose got angry and accidentally shattered the glass in our room twice in one week."

I winced at the memory, avoiding looking at Natasha. To my surprise, she laughed. 

"Sounds like you're going to fit right in. All the Avengers have totalled at least one building. Most of which are skyscrapers." 

I chuckled, though the statement didn't make me feel any better. I didn't want my life to be compared to their's. The only similarity between our lives was the superpower thing. My life was typical for a foster kid, living with one middle class family for a few years then living with another, the only constant being my sister. I'd never experienced wealth outside of my friends and certainly never been in a situation where the fate of humanity was resting on my actions. 

"Rose, you don't have to pretend to like what I say." 

I tensed, I'd made no move to suggest that I didn't appreciate what she said and yet she still knew. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought she was reading my mind. 

Thankfully, the waiter came by to take our order, stopping the conversation at that. I ordered soup and Rue and Natasha ordered a salad. Rue found that funny but I didn't get it. 

Natasha leaned on her elbows and gazed at us like we were the celebrities, "what exactly are your powers? No one really told me outright." 

"I can mess with light frequencies and Rose can mess with sound." 

"So you can make illusions?" 

Rue smiled sheepishly, "no, not really. The closest I can do to that is change the color of things." The table cloth turned red for a moment of demonstration before being turned back to white. "and I only learned that after I took chemistry and learned why things are different colors. It takes a lot out of me, though. Mostly what I can do is create and destroy light. So like, if it's really dark at night and I need to find something, I am my own flashlight. If I'm feeling like an ass, I'll make it really dark while Rose is doing her homework or something. Also, I can do this."

Hovering over the table just in front of her, Rue created two orbs, one that looked like a mini black hole and the other that looked exactly like what she put in front of my face earlier but less bright, as to not damage our vision. 

She looked at the two orbs the same way I looked at a nice concert soundboard, "can you touch them?" 

"Yeah totally, it's just light." Rue waved her hand right through both of them with no resistance, "there are temperature differences though, and they get warmer and colder the longer they're in existence. It's like a light bulb, the longer it's on, the warmer or colder it gets and the less smart of an idea to touch it." 

Natasha hesitated but stuck her hand through the dark orb. Her fingers weren't visible, being in the center where no light could reach, but I could still see the movement of her hand muscles that indicated that she was wiggling her fingers. She was enthralled. 

"We call the dark one Coke and the light one Pepsi." 

Natasha cracked a smirk, "why not Coke and Sprite?" 

I puffed my chest in mock definsive-ness, "because we don't like Sprite in this household."

She gave us a look but a smirk was still visible. The orbs faded out of existence and Natasha turned to me almost like an afterthought, "can you show me what you can do?" 

My mood immediately soured. While my older sister enjoyed showing off her powers, I hated it. It wasn't Rue's powers that made our parents abandon us and she never permanently damaged someone with it. Still, I forced myself to tell her. 

"I mean, I can do this?" All sound outside of our table ceased to reach our ears, "I call it my hermit sound barrier. No one can hear us and we can't hear them. I also have a whisper sound barrier where we can hear them but they can't hear us. I can also make sounds louder and quieter and cause that to happen," I pointed to the prominent red and black hearing aids in Rue's ears. "I got angry, was having an episode, and made her ears bleed." 

Instead of looking horrified like any sane person would, Natasha—again—looked like she was reminiscing about something. I couldn't tell if that face annoyed the shit out of me or what. All I knew was that I couldn't look at her while she made that face. 

"That was before our parents gave us up," Rue continued the story, but stopped at that. She knew that the story made me upset. 

"So what are your hobbies?" Natasha completely and awkwardly changed the subject. 

Rue burst out laughing while I failed at stifling a laugh, "very smooth, 'Tasha." 

She made a face that told me that she, too, was stifling a laugh, "well, what are they?" 

We rode out our giggles before answering, "we mostly just hang out with friends but we also do tech for local theaters." 

She eyes widened and she raised her eyebrows, "what does that even mean?" 

We looked at each other, then back at her. Who doesn't know what that means. 

"I do sound and she does lighting?" I say, hoping that clears something up. 

She gives us a look. 

Rue takes over, "you know when you see a play—" 

"I've never seen a play in my life." 

We sit there in silence, staring at her, "…go to an opera or something…" 

"I've never been to a theater in my life." 

We looked at her, not quite sure what to think. Or say. Or even really how we were supposed to even look at her to convey the bizarreness of the situation. 

"What the fuck," I said under my breath. 

"Guess what we're doing next weekend," Rue clasped her hands together and the pitch of her voice was raised. 

"Is there even a play going on next weekend that isn't as expensive as a Kardashian's ass?" I asked. 

"Yes," Rue said as if it were obvious, "the fucking Newsies! The one that Marco's in?" 

"Oh yeah!" I said excited but more than a little embarrassed that I'd forgotten my girlfriend's brother's play. He'd been so excited about it because it was the first time he wasn't just going to be an ensemble member. 

"What's the play about?" Natasha asked. 

"A bunch of newspaper boys promoting a strike. My boyfriend's younger brother, Marco, plays the little boy, Les." 

She hummed, "so, explain to me what 'doing tech' means." 

"Oh yeah," my brain did a full 180, "so, when you're in a theater, there are multiple groups of people that run a production. The most obvious is the actors, dancers, musicians, really anyone on stage. Then, there's the people that own the theater, the people that direct the show, the house managers, the ushers and box office people. There's also the hair, dress, and makeup people and set designers." I drew pictures with my hand movements, pointing at sections at the table that represented the different groups in theater in my head. "And then there's us. In almost every production, the actors all have mics on and there are a few sound effects every once in a while. I make sure everyone's mic is on and working before the show and find the appropriate sound effects. During a show, I turn on people's mics when they need to be on and make the sound effects play when they need to play. And then Rue—"

"Lemme tell her, you're absolute shit at explaining it," Rue interrupted me. 

I sulked. 

"Basically, I decide where we need lighting at certain points and use basic color theory to set the mood and setting. During an intense fight scene, I'll use red lighting and during a sad scene, I'll have blue lights. If an actor has a soliloquy, it should be dark everywhere but bright on that actor. If the scene is outside at night, I use mostly blues and a little bit of white. I have a lot more creative freedom than Rose, but she has bragging rights because everyone notices when she makes a mistake."

I bowed dramatically. I used to tease Rue about it all the time, but eventually it got old and she started helping me with the sound design part to help me balance tech with homework. 

"Sounds fun," Natasha sounded like she was pondering something. 

Cocking my head, I replied, "it's fun, just stressful. We have no life during a show." 

"Yeah," Rue breathed out a laugh, "during some plays, our schedule consisted of going home after school, speed finishing our homework, taking the subway to the theater before even the director got there, and then working on the sound and light design." 

Natasha hummed, "how long does this last?" 

"Well, we usually get into the production three weeks before the play is run and we come to watch it go once and get the scripts. We start writing a few things down and do a tiny bit, but then Hell Week, the week before the production, we do absolutely nothing but the play. While the play is running, we just go for pickups the runs which is on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. They usually only go on for two weekends but sometimes they go on for three."


	4. Oh, hey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long. I went to Disney World for four days and then came back home to immediately start doing stage crew for a local play. I haven't had much time to write and I'm not too proud of this chapter.

When we got back to the tower, Natasha gave us a tour of all the entrances and elevators. Still, I knew I wouldn't be able to navigate the building for weeks but I'd accepted my fate. 

She showed us the easiest set of elevators to get all the way to the living floors—which were 83 through 93—and when we entered the living room, Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Clint Barton were sitting on the couch. 

I created a whisper sound-barrier for a moment around Rue and I, just to laugh nervously and say, "hey look, it's detention man, a billionaire, and another assassin." 

Rue snickered and I dropped the sound-barrier a little too quickly, just enough for the world to catch the end of the snigger. The three men all turned their heads. 

Cool. 

"Hey," Clint Barton smiled politely and began walking toward us, "you're the sisters?" 

We nodded stiffly but Rue stuck out her hand for him to shake, "I'm Rue and she's Rose." 

As usual, I hid behind the confidence that my outfit naturally emanated. I held my body in the tough backstreet girl fashion that my patched jean jacket and half shaved head illustrated. 

He shook Rue's hand and then shook mine, "I'm Clint. How are you guys settling in." 

Rue laughed awkwardly, "not quite like the first two homes we've been in, but it could be worse." 

The laugh that bubbled up between us was disgustingly fake, the sort that you overhear between coworkers making half-assed jokes. My muscles want to contract into a cringe but I forced my limbs to stay lax. 

Tony came up to us with as much confidence as I'd expect coming from a multi-billionaire. I extended my hand out and Tony looked at it like it was poison. 

"I don't do handshakes." 

I quirked an eyebrow and held my hand closer to him, "you will today." 

"I'm serious." 

"So am I." 

"Not happening kiddo." 

"Today you're gonna learn to be a big boy." 

Rue snickered and Steve full out bellowed a laugh on the couch, egging me on while Tony glared. 

"Shake my hand," I used Symphony to make my voice louder and had weirdly echo-y effect to make a mock creepy sound. 

He shook my hand, trying to glare me down the whole time. I'd won. 

"Thank you." 

"You're a punk." 

I gestured towards my outfit and flipped my hair as annoyingly flamboyant as I could, "you think I don't know this? That's my jam." 

Rue choked and said in a high pitched voice, "your jam?" 

I quirked an eyebrow, about to spout another quip when Steve appeared to my side and slapped a hand on my back, "you'll fit in  _ just _ fine." 

I smirked but said nothing. 

"So, is that what you do?" Clint asked and Steve stepped back. 

I tried not to grimace at the mention or Symphony, "I mostly just make things really loud or really quiet but the echoing is just another plus." 

Rue, the absolute demon she was, decided it would be a  _ great _ idea to show off Symphony, "here- lemme… do you have any glass cups that you don't care if they're broken?" 

Or not. 

They looked at us horrified and I placed the palm of my hand on my face and said disappointed, "Rue…" 

"Look- here, is this glass expensive?" my idiot sister found herself in the living room, gesturing toward an empty wine glass. 

It was perfect for breaking, the sound wouldn't have to be too loud if I go the right frequency. It was thin, thinner even than things that I could break on  _ accident _ , meaning I wouldn't have to worry about damaging someone's ears because I wouldn't have to get too loud. 

"You can break it," Tony said, "but you're cleaning up the mess." 

"Okay, so- here, let's do this over the trash can. Where's a trash can? Oh, here's one. Rose, come here." 

I gave her a face but reluctantly walked toward her. She flicked the glass and I mulled over its pitch; if I matched it perfectly, I'd be able to shatter it without getting too loud. 

Thanking my school for having an amazing chorus program, I was able to figure out how to get to that note without sliding my voice around. I doubled the intensity of the sound, channeling it only so that only what was in front of me would hear it that loud. The glass, held at Rue's fingertips, collapsed on itself and fell into the trash. Her hands went straight to her ears. 

"Jesus fuck! I would've taken out my hearing aids if I knew you were trying to  _ kill _ me," she covered her ears, but I knew she was just being dramatic, "oh my god. You really need to focus its sound more." 

"You're such a drama queen," I sighed, nervously eyeing the four adults in the room, anxious about letting my guard down in front of them, "that's for making me show off Symphony." 

Another voice popped up behind us, "how did you do that?" 

My sister and I swiveled around to behold the sight of an… absolute nerd. It took me a moment to recognize him. His small frame and curly black hair was reminiscent of none of the Avengers… until I remembered the Hulk. He was Dr. Bruce Banner. 

I stood, adrenaline still lingering in my body from the fright, "oh, uh…" 

God, I wanted to smack myself. 

"Um, I just amplify sound and the glass breaks." 

"Yeah… but how?" his voice was soft and calming, but I could hear a twinge of fascination. I couldn't fathom how one man—that had probably killed more people than I could count—could sound so calm. 

I shrugged deciding to take the attention off me and pointed at Rue and said, "her powers are cooler." 

All eyes shifted to Rue. She jokingly glared at me, though happily diverted the attention from me, forming a large Pepsi. The bright white light illustrated the crevices of her face and made large reflections in her eyes. 

"How did you do  _ that? _ " the scientist asked once again. 

"Well, according to my chemistry teacher, light is formed when the electrons—" 

"I have a PhD in nuclear physics, I know how light works," he interrupted, "how did  _ you _ make the light?" 

Rue shrugged, nonchalant. Almost every time we showed people our powers, people would ask the same questions. We'd both spent weeks of our lives researching, trying to find the logic in our powers after our parents abandoned us. Eventually, we had to give up. There was no science behind it. Instead, we had to find ways to introduce it to people, find ways to explain it to them. 

Bruce floated more than walked towards the orb, hovering over it with a gleam in his eyes. 

"You can touch it, we call it Pepsi," Rue said before creating a dark orb, "and we call this little guy Coke." 

The man snapped out of his trance but still put his hand in the Pepsi skeptically, "why not Coke and Sprite?" 

Just like with Natasha, I puffed up my chest and pretended to be offended, "we do not drink Sprite in this household!" 

Dr. Banner looked at me, surprised more than anything, "oh, sorry." 

"No, no, wait, that was a joke. Sorry." 

"Hey wait," Tony butted in, "how come she's nice to Banner but an ass to me?" 

I snorted, "because you're an ass." 

"So Cap," Natasha halted the conversation right there, "you seem pretty quiet." 

He shrugged, "not much surprises me anymore. After the serum and waking up 70 year in the future, nothing much surprises me anymore."

"Plus we have Wanda," Clint added. 

"Plus we have Wanda," Steve agreed. 


	5. Paranoia

When we got back to the tower, Rue and I busied ourselves by unpacking our stuff and setting up our rooms. I texted my girlfriend and Tony came in to teach us about his o.g. Google Home, JARVIS. Through that, I learned how to open my window, which just so happened to be the entire far wall from the door. 

The scene was beautiful if not terrifying, the vast creeping twilight hovering over the city, looking almost ethereal and heavenly from above, as opposed to the dregs from below, the streets teeming with bums and rats and convicts.

Rue, being the personable one, announced she was going to find someone to talk to. I couldn’t imagine voluntarily hanging out with  _ those _ kind of people. Instead, I switched off my lights and watched the sunset. At first it was surreal, the sun somewhere behind me reflecting its orange gleam from the buildings, contrasted by navy blue clouds marbled into the soft pink and purple sky. I took out my guitar and began strumming mindlessly. 

But once the sky began to darken and the buildings lost their color, I couldn’t shake the feeling of something being wrong. It was like something was out there in the night, watching, waiting to strike. Out of the entire city, it decided to perch itself near  _ my _ window, staring at me like a cat would at a mouse. Watching. Patiently waiting as it slowly took over the city. I realized I was no longer plucking at my guitar, instead frozen in place. I couldn't move for fear of… fear of what? It was just a sunset. I forced myself to move the guitar off my lap, the flesh on my back crawling as I did. My knees cracked when I slowly rose up and I ran to the light switch, flooding the room in light. I closed the window, shutting out the city and the horrible feeling. 

  
  
  
  


For the first night in half a decade, I slept in my own room. It was strange to be completely alone and I couldn't tell if I liked it or not. Though, my opinion on the matter didn't change the fact that I couldn't sleep. Too much had happened that day. 

For starters, I had no idea why my previous foster parents had given us up. I mean, sure we were very different; they were super Christian and weird about gay shit, while we were punk Athiests and I was a flaming homosexual. But we didn’t clash as much as one would expect, not enough to be grounds to give us up. 

Then there was the obvious. I was sleeping ninety stories above ground and less than a hundred meters from some of the most famous people in the world that could snap my head off in an instant. 

I mean, it couldn't be that big of a secret that they just wanted us for our powers, another weapon under their belt. Even if they weren't planning on doing it now, they'd still train us for when we turn eighteen—when the foster care system won't be down their backs the whole time. 

I curled in on myself and pushed the stiff covers over my head. Sleep wasn't going to come easy tonight and I'd already accepted that I'd be a zombie the next day. I doubted I'd sleep at all that night. That was fine, I didn't have any tests and it was a rally day so all class periods would be cut short to make room for an assembly that I'd be skipping. 

I wasn't sure why, but I started to cry. It started off as just tears leaking from my eyes, a neutral expression but a clenched jaw. But it escalated. When would it ever  _ not _ escalate? 

I ended up with a fist shoved into my mouth to stifle the violent sobs wracking my body and stop the hyperventilation from taking over. It wasn't working. I was having a panic attack. 

I pulled my hand out of my mouth, the hairs on my arms prickled at the small movement. The trembling was made even more intense by the desperate gasps of air. The hum of the air vents increased threefold and suddenly, I couldn't breathe. Something was in the room with me, the same thing from nightfall. lt had somehow entered the room. 

The thing—I'd convinced myself it was a raven—glared at me from the far right corner. It just sat there, staring at me, observing, waiting for a moment to strike. 

The sound of the door opening startled me and I jumped out of the bed and hid behind it from the intruder. I knew who ever had entered the room wasn't a friend. Their stride didn't match Rue's clunky step pattern; it was too soft, too careful. They were trying to sneak up on me. 

"Rose?" 

A soft voice rung out, cautious and gentle. Natasha. I knew that she wouldn't hurt me, she had a reputation to keep up with and having a girl killed under her guardianship wouldn't help with that. Besides, she probably wanted me to be a part of the Avengers when I came of age. Though, I continued to keep still, adrenaline coursing through my body in mass quantities. I felt like a rabbit hunted by a fox, hiding in a ditch, knowing I'd be caught for sure but wanting to prolong my life while it lasted. 

The soft padding of her feet circled around the bed and her form crouched a good few feet away from me. 

"What's up?" she said almost casually, as if she'd done this a million times. 

I cowered and curled up in a ball, placing my hands over my neck to protect it.  _ Go away, go away, go away. _

Natasha huffed and the soft duffle of fabric indicated she was sitting down, "what's up with the air vents?" 

Only then did I notice my powers, Symphony, meddling with the air vent sounds. She was just barely boosting the air vent sounds, though the echo made it sound a lot more intense. I cut her off

"Sorry," I mumbled, bringing my hands down from my neck to instead of squeeze my legs together. 

"Hey, you don't need to apologize." 

I wiped a tear from my eye and shrugged. We sat there for a while, sitting in tension thicker than honey. It was obvious Natasha wanted me to start the conversation but I was dead set on starting precisely  _ nothing _ . 

Eventually she gave in, "are you going to tell me what's going on or no?" 

"First of all, can you tell me what the hell is going on?" I snapped, "why the fuck do you want us and why did the Thompsons give us up out of nowhere?"

She sighed, "I'm not sure why they gave you up, the social worker never told me." 

"Yeah but I've heard that you're a master hacker, why don't you like, hack into the system?"

"Because it doesn't matter." 

Something about that statement felt far more comforting than I would have liked coming from a stranger. God, it was such a cheesy statement, too.  _ It doesn't matter.  _ Of course if fucking mattered. Still, all my pride was lost and I broke down crying. 

"Hey, hey you're going to be okay." 

She leaned in and pulled me into an embrace. I nearly froze, she didn't seem like the kind of person to give hugs. Instead, I melted into her touch. 


	6. School

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rue and Rose's relationship is heavily based off of my relationship with my little sister. Some of these interactions are actual interactions I've had with her, including the "at least I'm not ugly" interaction. 
> 
> Also, I want to thank the people that commented on this story. It was almost left for dead but then I got two comments and inspiration sprung once again.

The blaring of an alarm woke me up. It took me a moment of confusion to remember that it wasn't any physical clock in my room and was instead the alarm that Tony had helped me set up through JARVIS the previous evening. 

I dragged myself out of bed, wishing that I could skip school and sleep, but I didn't want to stay in a tower that was teeming with self-righteous superheroes.

Rue and I quickly ate some cereal and awkwardly sat on the couch with our backpacks, texting significant others about our bizarre situation. Thankfully, it didn't seem that many people in the tower were awake, only Natasha and Bruce who said that Steve was on his morning run. 

Eventually, Natasha called us to leave and we made our way into the garage. The car we got in was nice but not too nice to draw attention and I mentally thanked her for that. I also noticed that she hadn't made any move to indicate what had happened that night and my relief was overpowering.

The ride was quiet, dreadfully so, save for the very end where Natasha asked when we should be picked up. 

"We'll take the city bus back. We usually hang out with friends after school." 

We hopped out of the car without saying goodbye and didn't look back as she drove away, instead focusing on walking to where we sat in the mornings. My friends didn’t usually sit together outside of lunch, instead sitting wherever our first period was though today, Rue and I had called for a group meeting in the auditorium.

The auditorium was the best place to be at Stuyvesant High if you wanted to be alone. It was incredibly large, larger than any other community theater I’d worked in and students weren’t really allowed to hang out in there. The only reason we could get in was because Rue and I had theater tech in our first period and the auditorium was our home base. 

There was an abundance of little crevasses we could hide in, like a corner of the balcony or in one of the changing rooms. Our favorite place to hide was The Cage, the room where we kept all our equipment. It was about the size of a small living room. 

There were eight people in there with us. Of course we had Rue’s boyfriend, Adrian Moreno, and my girlfriend, Eliana Moreno, along with three of my friends and three of Rue’s friends. We sat on really any open surface, from tables with nothing on them to laying on top of the speaker shelf, unable to sit up because the ceiling was too close.

We told the story of how yesterday, the Thompsons just up and let us go out of nowhere and how the social worker, with disbelief in his own eyes, told us that we were going to be fostered by the Avengers. We illustrated with our hands as we explained how Natasha was our new foster parent and what happened when we met each Avenger and their reaction to our powers. 

"Yo, you live with stuck up rich people now!" said London, the friend that was laying on the speaker shelf

"I know right. Like, legit my bedroom is on the _90th_ floor.”

“Holy fuck,” Adrian chuckled in disbelief, “you guys _have_ to have us over sometime. We no longa’ richer than ya’ll.”

“For real! I mean, now we don’t need you guys as sugar daddies,” Rue joked.

“Now you can be _my_ sugar daddy,” pipped in Rue’s friend Andrea.

“Hey, don’t steal my sugar daddy,” Adrian shoved her with his elbow.

“Oh, come on, you rich, you don’t even need no sugar daddy,” Andrea pointed out. 

Her family had been on and off food stamps since the birth of her twin brothers seven years ago and it was her favorite thing to joke about. We helped her out however we could, even though we were just teenagers.

Hunter, Rue’s quietest friend, joined in for the first time since he’d entered the room, “yeah but like, did it _really_ have to be the Avengers? It couldn’t have been Obama or someone that actually has emotions other than JUSTICE!” He held a fist up and deepened his voice on the last word, accentuating just how justice-full their singular emotion was.

“Ha! I’m pretty sure Tony’s only emotion is being overly cavalier.”

“For real!” Rue agreed, “he was so butthurt about having to shake her hand. It was like a toddler throwing a tantrum!”

“He called you a punk,” Luis reiterated, “a fucking _punk_.”

Everyone laughed. Rue and I’s friends were a collection of most of Stuyvesant High’s sparse punk population and some of the _even_ _more_ sparse black and latino population, plus a few “normies” as we called them. Punk was hardly a derogatory word in our group, and we called each other punks as a way of being affectionate. 

“Poor cracker can’t handle stooping down to shake an Asian girl’s hand,” DeShawn, one of the very few black kids in the school, was laying belly-down on the floor in his true fashion. He rolled over dramatically with the back of his hand over his brow, “oh no, what will I ever do if I have to interact with lower-class citizens.”

I placed my hand over my heart in mock offence,“hey, I’m not just any Asian girl! I’m a descendant of Genghis Khan."

My friend, Jordan, put her hand on my shoulder, "my dude, just because you're Mongolian doesn't mean you're related to Ganghis Khan. 

We continued mocking each other and the Avengers until the bell rang. It felt great after the thick tension of the morning and previous day. I felt the anxiety roll off me like steaming water from a hot shower, easing the tightness in my back and creating a buffer between me and my new home life. My friends had done this after the Schuckers had given us up at the end of middle school and were now doing it again for me. Even between the moving homes, they’d been godsends helping me through tough times. I'd kill for them and I’d die for them.

But school had to start and tear me away from my friends. I'd probably gotten four hours of sleep as opposed to the eight or nine hours I usually got. First period was fine, it woke me up a little because I had to run around and get things ready for an assembly that was happening the next day. Plus, Elianna had tech, so I got to hang out with her. Though, second through fourth period was a blur of trying to stay awake and over-excited friends trying to talk about the Avengers during lectures. 

My fourth period class was history, meaning I had Brandy, or _“Mrs. Schucker”_. Despite my love for her and her class, I found myself counting down the seconds to lunch. Finally, the bell rang and all the students stampeded out of the classroom. I sighed, packing up my things in the near empty classroom. 

"So," Brandy said from her desk right before I stood up to leave, "how did things go yesterday?"

I shrugged and put my things back down. I wasn't surprised she wanted to know what was going on, in fact I was more surprised that I hadn't seen it coming. She was the closest thing I had to a maternalistic figure since my parents stopped visiting us two years ago and we were closer than my last foster parents had been. 

"Fine, I guess." 

"You guess? Come on, I know you're not a big fan of the Avengers. What's happening?" 

"I just," I paused and let my gesturing hand fall to the desk, "I don't know. I just feel like maybe the only reason we're being fostered by them is because we have powers." 

"Of course you're being fostered by them because of your powers!" 

"Yeah and the only reason they want me is so they can have another person to fight for them." 

"I'm pretty sure that's not the case, and if it is, that's illegal." 

"Really?" 

"Pffft, yeah! Adopting a child so they can work for you for free? Illegal. But I don't think the high and mighty Avengers would try anything like that, it'd be too public and too obvious." 

There was a tiny ripple of relief in my body, though it barely made a dent in the unsettled feeling in my gut. I knew something was wrong, something Brandy didn't know about. 

"I'll… keep that in mind. Thank you." 

I left the room and went to dick around with my friends in the theater classroom until the unsettled feeling went away. Though, I'd forgotten that the rest of my friends would've caught wind of what happened, which then spread to all the students that spent lunch in the theater classroom. As soon as I entered the room, I was barraged by a horde of dramatic teenagers asking about everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. 

Thankfully, the teacher, used to their theatrical outbursts, was able to calm them down enough for me to get my bearings. I explained to them the escapades of the previous day while trying to talk over their strange questions. 

When I was done, they insisted I have a tarot card reading on my past, present, and future, which would be pretty random except for the fact that this group of people were really into spiritual things. I wasn't quite sure if I believed in tarot cards, but I let it happen anyway. 

I knew the drill, shuffle the cards until I felt content and cut the deck if I felt the need to. Usually, it didn't take too much time for me to shuffle the deck, always feeling the cards were properly scrambled after three or four shuffles. Though this time, for whatever reason, I had to take a few minutes to get the cards correctly scrambled. When Jack, the guy nominated to do the reading, laid down the three cards, he hummed and studied them for a moment. 

"So you’ve got an upside down Ten of Pentacles for the past, which makes sense. Basically, you put a lot of hard work into things and it never seems to pay off. You didn't have the resources or stability that a teen needs because you're in the foster care system. It's finally in the past so you'll probably _actually_ get opportunities without fighting tooth and nail for them. I also feel like this could mean you won't move houses anymore."

I nodded, I'd seen it so many times as my present and a few times as the future, but never the past. I hoped what he was saying was right. 

"For your present you got the beautiful Moon card. It means that right now you're either lying to yourself or misinterpreting things. Are you excited to be with the Avengers?"

I scoffed, "hell no." 

"Alright, so usually, the moon is about romanticizing things, but I'm getting the feeling that you're trying to build a wall to protect yourself from the rejection you feel is inevitable. Next time you see your therapist, talk about your fears about the new home and keep in mind the possibility of them being delusions."

Jack paused for me to stop and think about what he had said. I couldn't say I agreed with this card but I'd keep it in mind anyway. Everything that was happening in my head seemed so certain. 

"The last card, your past, is the most interesting one. While the past and present want you to be more positive toward your new situation, the Nine of Swords implies that something bad is going to happen. Sometimes it can be an old issue bubbling up, but I feel like it's going to be a new trauma. It's basically saying something bad is going to happen and it's going to make you overly anxious and paranoid."

I groaned, I already had enough of that to begin with. 

Someone clasped their hands together and said in a sarcastic voice, "well if that wasn't a great tarot card reading, I don't know what is." 

  
  


The rest of lunch consisted of only tarot card reading. They were able to go through a relationship spread for each Avengers, a two futures spread, and even a Celtic cross spread. The two futures and Celtic cross spread said the same thing that my other reading had said: something bad was going to happen. The Celtic cross said it was going to be out of my control and would be caused by a person, though all the relationship spreads I did with the Avengers had no negative predictions. 

The rest of the school day went by easily, we had a substitute in Spanish so we played mafia and then I just had language arts and color guard. It had somehow gotten to the color guard coach that I was being fostered by the Avengers. She mentioned it once and the whole class went batshit, asking questions and smothering me. It took at least five minutes for the coach to calm us down so we could start practice. 

I couldn't seem to focus at all, constantly dropping my rifle while doing simple spins and having a flag nearly fall on my face. 

When the bell rang, I changed out and left the room as quickly as possible to avoid questions and made a beeline to the meet-up spot near the parking area. There stood Rue, Adrian, and Eliana, waving for me to come quicker. 

"Where are we going?" I asked once we started making our way towards Adrian's car. 

"Our house," Eliana gave me a quick peck on the cheek and swung an arm around my waist. I shot a quick text to Natasha to tell her where we were going and we were off.


	7. The Interview

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, after writing that yesterday and getting such a great response, I got really excited today and wrote another chapter. Not sure if this one is good, but it's actually the first chapter dedicated to the actual plot that is to come.

Eli and Adrian's apartment complex was luxurious, to say the least. Each apartment was large and the building was full of upper middle class families that decorated their residence to look lavish and modern. The Moreno household, though, was the black sheep of the complex. One would think that a family with a Peruvian immigrant mother and a black catholic step-dad, the house would look pretty conservative, or at the very least look a  _ little _ Peruvian. Instead, the common person's first reaction to opening the door was to stop and stare, confused. Even if you knew the Morenos, you'd expect some level of their affluence to peak through in the way they decorated but instead it seemed like their mom, Lucia, was living in her teenage dream aesthetic.

They never used their actual ceiling lights in the living room, opting for excess amounts of fairy lights and a few lamps to dimly illuminate the records and signed posters of bands no one has ever heard of. There were pictures on the wall of skulls with mohawks and one with a little girl holding a nailed bat, proudly flipping off the viewer. The coffee table was covered in newspaper articles about terrorism, comic strips, and band logos all painted over with varnish. You couldn’t even tell what the table was made out of because it was completely covered up. Under that was a rug with the design of a goat's head in the center of a pentagram, which looked a little more goth than punk but I never mentioned anything about it.

Suffice to say, it wasn't  _ terribly _ convervative. 

Though, some could say that the style wasn't actually punk because everything felt clean and most of the furniture had cost a lot of money. 

Lucia had come to America when she was five and her teen years were lived out as a grungy immigrant punk in Florida. It wasn't until she moved to New York and married her husband, Michael, did she actually have money. She seemed to have converted him to her punkish ways, otherwise such a stubborn, conservative man would not have let his house be decorated the way it was. 

As soon as we entered the apartment, we were trampled by their giant sheepdogs, Bones and Bruiser. We ushered them into Adrian’s room where we all pet the large, cartoonishly stupid dogs.

Though, I knew that we shouldn’t be there for long so we quickly finished our homework without dicking around  _ too  _ much before going to the tower. We were really dreading it, but we knew that we shouldn’t get back too late because it was our first full day. There was also that horrible training Natasha wanted us to do. It wasn’t like we didn’t exercise all at school. I had color guard and the building was ten stories high, for christ sake. The only reason she’d want us to know how to fight was because they wanted us to train us to fight for them. 

Adrian and Eli wanted to drive us to Stark Industries, and Lucia and Michael, wanted to tag along, obviously wanting to actually get a look at the tower and maybe meet the people we’d be staying with. We knew this, of course, but left on our own after texting Natasha to tell her we were on our way.

The city bus trip was uneventful. We weren’t talking loudly to each other or annoying the shit out of the other passengers. In fact, the whole ride was silent between us, both of us being too exhausted to actually do anything other than listen for our stop. Thankfully, we only had to take one bus, instead of hopping from one bus to the next like we had to when we lived with the Thompsons. 

We got off on our stop and lugged ourselves to the sidewalk, making our way to through the front entrance. There was a single reporter sitting with her crew, waiting near the entrance on a bench. When they saw us, the reporter came up to us. A surge of panic welled up in me when I realized that she wanted to interview us.

I looked to Rue, who shrugged nonchalantly, “anything to postpone getting into the tower.” Her logic washed my fears away and I stood taller and smiled at the woman.

She was a middle aged black woman with a motherly face and formal clothing, “are you Rue and Rose Sarnai?”

“Yeah?” the woman had butchered our last name, but we let it slide.

The woman was sweating bullets, obviously having been in the summer sun for a while, “I’m Maria Brandt from NPR. Do you mind if I interview you?” 

“NPR?” I said, “man, our previous foster parents listened to you guys all the time.”

“Is that so?” she asked as she waved over the camera crew.

“Wait,” Rue said, “how long have you guys been in the sun? I don’t know if we’re allowed to take you inside, but we can certainly go into the shade… and probably somewhere we’re not as likely to be interrupted.”

She nodded and we led her towards the back where the gardens were, offering the camera crew help with lugging some of their stuff around, having carried similar equipment around in community theaters. They declined, probably not wanting a couple of punk teenagers carrying their expensive things and I didn’t blame them. 

We found a small gazebo hidden behind some bushes and set up camp there, watching in fascination as the two camera crew people set up.

“How long have you guys been waiting,” Rue asked.

“A few hours,” Maria said, “there was a whole crowd of us waiting for you to get off school but when you didn’t show, most people assumed it was a false rumor.”

My stomach sank at the thought of being bombarded by reporters, but despite that, I chuckled, “we were off at our friends’ house. How come you didn’t leave?”

She shrugged and pointed to the cameramen, “Sam and Dervan had a feeling, and they’re always right.”

The blonde cameraman shook his head, “no, Sam’s the one that’s always right. I just pick up on his hunches before everyone else does.”

Sam laughed awkwardly but said nothing.

Rue suddenly shot up and began ruffling through her backpack.

“What are you doing,” I asked.

“Gotta brush my hair and fix my makeup.”

“Wow, Rue. Always thinking about your looks,” I said, but motioned for her to hand me the hairbrush.

I brushed out the day’s worth of knots in my hair and then teased it up to look fuller and have a more punky look. I wiped off my black lipstick and instead put on a dark red so that I couldn’t be mistaken for goth, then touched up my eyeliner and intensified the angles of my eyebrows. After taking a second look at my face, I decided I had to up my eyeshadow game and added some more black around the eyes and faded that out into purple before taking out the eyeliner again and extending my wings and accentuating my monolid. 

As an afterthought, I pulled on my jean jacket and Rue followed suit. Maria made a comment about how hot it is outside but we shrugged it off, used to the comments. 

It wasn’t much longer until Sam and Dervan were ready and I asked why they only had tech for such a personal interview if there were originally so many reporters that were going to meet us at the door. Dervan said that it was another one of Sam’s hunches.

Maria introduced us and then went straight into the interview, “is it true that you’ve been adopted by the Avengers?”

“Just Natasha. And we’re being fostered, not adopted. Though it would be funny if all the Avengers had adopted us as one big polyamorous family.”

Maria smiled before asking another question, “and it’s true that you also have superpowers?”

“Yeah, she can do things with light and I can do things with sound.”

“Can you show us?”

“Alright,” I said before creating a hermit sound barrier. 

Maria and the cameramen looked around in amazement as all sound stopped existing inside the gazebo. Maybe they were looking to make sure time hadn’t stopped around them, but the world kept going on around us. The trees and bushes rustled in the breeze and a flock of pigeons flew near us, but no sound went through the gazebo. Maria tried to say something, but no sound came out. 

I lifted the hermit barrier and suddenly all could be heard again. The wind brushing past bushes, pigeons cooing and flying around, and the distant hustle and bustle of Park Avenue could be heard and were paid more attention to than previously because we knew what being without sound was like. 

“Wow,” Maria said, breathless.

“I call my powers Symphony. Look at what Rue can do.”

A Pepsi about the diameter of a lightbulb appeared above Rue’s hand. Maria looked at it the same way everyone else did when we showed them our powers and just stared. Rue made it float over towards her, who’s eyes were widening by the second. I saw Sam and Dervon exchange looks behind the camera.

“How did you get these powers?” her voice was softer than before, it seemed she was asking more from her heart than for the camera.

Rue made the Pepsi disappear before answering, “as far as we’re concerned, we were born with them. Our parents always said Rose could scream unnaturally loud as a baby and the room always seemed darker when I was upset. They just evolved with age.”

The interview went on, albeit feeling a little more like a fascinating artifact than an actual human, but that just came along with showing someone my powers. When she prodded at our personal lives too much, we refused to answer, though that only happened a few times. 

Right before we wrapped up, Maria asked, “is there anything you’d like to say before we leave?”

“Yeah,” I said, “please don’t crowd me. Especially with reporters, I can and will shut you all up.”

“Also, I want an eagle,” Rue announced.

“What? No. We wouldn’t even be able to take care of it.”

Rue clapped her hands, ignoring me, “and that’s a wrap, people.”

I laughed and the camera shut off. We were gathering our things to leave before Maria stopped us, “before you go, we wanted to tell you something. He just wanted to make sure your powers were real before telling you.”

My heart dropped, the last time someone had said that to us, a doctor was dead set on figuring out how we had the powers, so we had to undergo unholy amounts of (probably illegal) experimentation before our sperm and egg donors finally put an end to it.

“What is it?” Rue asked wearily but still managing to maintain confidence in her tone and posture.

Sam rubbed his neck, “ever since I can remember, I’ve been able to predict what’s going to happen. Sometimes they’re more detailed than others, like last week I just  _ knew _ that I had to be here because we’d get a good interview, and I just assumed that the adoption rumor was why.”

Rue and I looked at each other, astonished. Was there another one of us?

“Sometimes they’re vague like this, but one time I predicted a whole breakup. Like, the whole where, why, and when it happened to a T. If I focus hard enough, I can figure out how a person’s week will go.”

“And when did this first start up?” I asked.

“Ever since I can remember,” he said and then turned to Devan, “but I haven't been alone.”

“Yeah…” Dervan drawled out, “I can… read minds and emotions.”

We turned dramatically towards him, “what?”

“Like, when we told you that we needed to say something, you both remembered a doctor that did tests on you when you were little.”

“Rose,” Rue whispered, “I don't think we’re alone.”

A thought popped up into my brain and I swiveled around to Maria, “do  _ you _ have any powers?”

She laughed, “no, I’m just their coworker.”

“I know what you’re thinking, Rue,” Dervan said, “and Sam and I have had the same idea.”

“What?” I asked, not liking that someone knew something about Rue that I didn’t.

“There has to be more of us out there,” Rue whispered distantly, “like people born with powers. People that don’t gain them through weird life circumstances like Bruce Banner or Steve Rodgers.”

“Holy shit.”

“Do you guys have a business card?”

“Yes,” Maria dug around in her bag for a moment before handing Rue a small slip of paper with her face and contact information on it.

“And you guys, too?” Rue looked at the cameramen. Two more cards were handed to her, “we’ve kept Natasha waiting long enough but I’ll email you guys when I can.”

They all nodded and I could see Dervan smiling knowingly as we gathered our things and left.

I put up a whisper sound barrier, “what was all that?”

“We need to keep in touch with those people. That was the only way I knew how.”

“You made such a big deal out of it though…”

“Yeah, well maybe I’m a little freaked out.”

“Well, can’t say I  _ don’t _ feel that.”

We entered the building through the back because it was closer, which in hindsight was a lot better than our previous thought of going in through the front. There had to be insane amounts of security and we would probably feel far more out of place than we did through the back. We took the hidden elevator recommended by Natasha to get to the very top. 

Speaking of Natasha, when we exited the elevator into the living room, we could see the back of a red bob situated on the couch facing the window. Though, sitting on another couch where he could see us, was Clint Barton. 

“They’re here, Nat” Clint announced and Natasha turned around and smiled warmly at the sight of us.

Part of me growled at the fact she was already acting maternal, though another part still picked up on the hidden sarcasm behind the smile. 

“So what took so long?”

“We left a little later than expected,” I shrugged nonchalantly, “Eli and Adrian’s parents caught us on the way out and wanted to know the whole situation.”

She eyed me up and down, her smile having turned into a smirk, “pretty good. You could make a good spy one day if you really wanted to.”

My blood froze at the prospect of becoming a spy, she really did want me to work for the Avengers. 

“You don’t have to lie, though, Clint saw you with some reporters. There’s nothing wrong with that, we all get caught up in them. Happens to the best of us.”

I huffed.

“We can show you where the meeting rooms are so you don’t have to be in the heat next time,” Clint piped up.

While I did like the prospect of being inside next time, I still didn’t want to give into their help. We could learn how to traverse the tower ourselves.

I changed the subject as quickly as possible, “whatever, what is this training you want us to do?”


	8. Training

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three days in a row! I've been most productive at night and my parents want me to wake up at 8am so I haven't gotten much sleep, but I'm finding different parts of the day where I can nap. My little sister has been helping me revise my work, but please tell me if you noticed any grammatical errors.
> 
> Anyways, this isn't the most interesting chapter, but I promise, the next one will be packed full of getting to know a little bit about the girl's past.

After wiping off our makeup and changing into some better clothes, we found ourselves in the training room, a huge room filled with training dummies, punching bags, dumbbells, and a large wrestling ring in the middle of it all. The only thing lacking were various weapons that Natasha had to take out of the room because she wanted it to be unlocked for us at all times and the foster care code made it so that all weapons had to be locked away.

We were told that it was originally Natasha’s training room—because apparently each Avenger had one—and she decided to merge with Clint so Rue and I could have our own.

“Today, we just want to know where your bodies are,” Clint said, “do you do any physical activity in school?”

“We do weight training, I do cross country, and she does color guard,” Rue said.

Natasha looked lost for a moment before leaning into Clint to whisper, “what are cross country and color guard?”

Rue and I laughed, “cross country is running and Rose… Rose just throws guns around.”

Natasha looked horrified and I was quick to clarify, “well, the rifles aren’t real and it’s mostly flags we deal with.”

From the way that he, too, seemed excited at the idea of throwing fake guns, I could tell Clint  _ also _ had no idea what color guard was. I wasn’t surprised at that as it wasn’t the most well known activity. 

“What’s the point of it?” he asked. 

“It’s just fun to watch. We perform during halftime for the football teams or for parades. There’s some real preppy people in guard, but it’s still fun.”

Natasha once again leaned into Clint and asked, “what does preppy mean?” 

I snorted, “have you  _ gone _ to high school?”

“No.”

“Oh,” I sobered up, “isn’t that illegal?”

She smiled softly, “I’m from Russia, I was trained by a government facility to be a Russian spy when I was a kid.”

“Oh… I thought you were an assassin.”

This time it was Clint and Natasha’s turn to laugh, “just a spy.”

The conversation was veered back to the inevitable by Clint, “so the cross country and weight training will be a big help for all this. I’m not sure about your… gun throwing team.”

I grinned, realizing this wasn’t going to be quite as bad as I expected, though I still wasn’t ready to admit that to anyone.

We got to stretching and they were surprised that I could stretch as far as I could, though I didn’t tell them that we  _ had _ to be flexible in color guard. I could go into full splits and even stack some small books under my right split. Rue could stretch better than most people our age, but she couldn’t go fully into her left or straddle split. Though our stretching abilities were both overshadowed by Clint’s standard, but even he couldn’t do the things Natasha could do.

I could have sworn she had the joints of a wet noodle while still maintaining the muscle tone of a tiger. If she really wanted to, I’d bet she could fold herself to fit into a suitcase.

When Clint and Natasha felt we were properly stretched, we moved over to the punching bags, where they taught us how to throw real punches and kicks without hurting ourselves or falling over. 

Then came something we were familiar with, weight training. We did a few warmups to get our upper body strength going before delving into bench pressing.

“Okay, so usually, I lift 70 pounds and Rose does 70, too? Or is it 65?”

“It’s 65, but in my defense, you weigh more than me.”

“Hey,” Rue shoved me in mock offence.

“It’s not my fault you’re fat.”

“And it’s not my fault you’re a midget.”

“Let’s not fat-shame or midget-shame anyone now,” Clint said, though I could hear a bit of humor in his tone. 

“That’s right, we should…” I looked for something about him that we could mock but couldn’t find anything right off the bat, “face-shame people.”

“What?”

“Ignore me.”

“Alright,” Natasha cut in, smiled as if she’s been through this multiple times, “let’s get onto the bench pressing.”

After they double checked that we had the proper form and everything, they let me get going. I did my usual 65 pounds and was surprisingly able to get up to 13 reps. I thought I was going to finally catch up to Rue until she pressed 70 pounds 12 times. 

“Looks like you two need to up your weights,”* Clint pointed out.

I shrugged, “I think it’s just a good day.”

He smiled and nodded with a look in his eyes that made me feel like he could see further into my thought process than Dervan.

“What’s that look all about?” I asked. 

“Don’t downplay your abilities, kid,” he swung an arm around my shoulders but I ducked out of it, mood soured at his attempt, “you’re a lot better than we thought you’d be and that’s a good thing.”

I scowled inwardly, remembering the whole reason I didn’t want to do the training. God, how could I have forgotten? I was training with the fucking Avengers because they wanted to have another tool under their belt.

Natasha eyed me up and down looking like she, too, could read into my soul. I took the fact that she didn’t reject what I was thinking as confirmation of my theory. 

Clint nodded his head towards the door, “we’ve done enough today. Let’s grab some dinner.”

“Where to?” Natasha asked Rue and I as we walked out the door.

“Jesus, are we eating out two days in a row?”

“Why not? We don’t have any dinner plans for tonight.”

Rue and I looked at each other and she made the ASL sign for ‘whisper.’ 

I set up a whisper sound barrier between the two of us, “what?”

“Where do you want to go?”

It wasn’t uncommon for us to bring up whisper barriers for just talking between ourselves. It wasn’t that most of the time we didn’t want them to hear us, it was more of a privacy thing.

“How about that Mongolian place in Chinatown? We could totally freak them out with some of the food there.”

“Going for the big guns already?”

“Hundred percent, baby,” I brought down the sound barrier, “there’s a small place in Chinatown where they make truly authentic Mongolian food. We could go there.”

“Yeah,” Natasha said offhandedly, not knowing what we had in store for them, “is it okay if we bring Wanda? I don’t think you guys have met.”

“Sure,” Rue said casually, but looked at me with mischief in her eyes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *When bench pressing, you should generally go for the weights just heavy enough for you to struggle to get to 10 reps (repeats, or times you lift the weight). 


	9. Gotta Love That Offal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I had the character ideas for Rue and Rose for a few months before writing this. Originally, they were far more Mongolian and in my effort to understand the culture, I decided to make some traditional Mongolian food. After just fifteen minutes of searching I decided this: nope. They eat everything from the skin to the stomach and anything else in between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if it's next chapter or the chapter after that yet, but things about to go down.

After meeting a very standoff-ish Wanda, we packed ourselves into the same car from that morning. Something about how shy the brunette was drew me towards her, though it might have been because she was the only person in the tower that didn’t seem to have any strong opinions on us. 

“So,” Clint turned around from the passenger’s seat, “are you guys Mongolian or you just like the food?”

“We’re Mongolian. We moved to America in 2008. I was five, Rose was four.”

“Really,” Natasha said, “do you remember much?”

“All I remember was that I’d run around with the goats and sheep a lot because we were herders. Oh, also it was _freezing_ cold.”

Natasha and Wanda both laughed, knowing full well what we meant, having lived through winters not far from ours. 

“Why’d you guys move to America?”

“Are you kidding, Clint? We were _herders._ It’s a miracle that we’re living here now so we haven’t lived our lives in -40 degree weather in a ger. Gers don't have heating.”

The drive was longer than it would have been if we didn’t have to drive through tourist areas to get to Chinatown, or maybe even if we didn’t live _in_ the tourist area, it would have been significantly quicker. But it wasn’t like we weren’t used to it, we’d lived in the city for most of our lives. 

The restaurant was in a smaller part of Chinatown where less tourists went, so it was easier to find parking. The sign above the door read in large Chinese characters, with Mongolian a little smaller underneath that, and in even smaller print below that, said “Borte’s Kitchen” even though the real translation of the Mongolian was “Borte’s Ger.”

The owner, Chimgee, was busy rolling some coins when we entered. Recognition lit up on her face when she saw Rue and I, but I could tell the moment she noticed the people behind us. 

Rue greeted her sheepishly in Mongolian. 

“Rue, Rose,” she looked between us and the three Avengers behind us, dumbfounded, “so the rumors are true.”

“Yeah…” 

She chuckled, “wow, I never thought I’d have any superheros in here.”

“Tell me about it.”

She laughed, then went back to business, “table for five?”

“Yeah.”

She seated us, gave us some menus, and got our drink orders. Rue and I had everyone get milk tea, even though we knew they wouldn’t like it.

“So,” Natasha eyed us, “you must come here often.”

“We used to, not anymore, though. After our parents gave us up to the foster care system, we’d come here for our weekly visits with them.”

“What happened to that?” Clint asked, eyeing the menu.

I really didn’t like talking about our parents outside of close friends, and neither did Rue, but she was a lot better at approaching the topic without getting angry. Every time we talked to people about it—especially to adults—they’d always show us horrible amounts of pity. Our friends, on the other hand, had lived with us through the situation or at least had dysfunctional enough families that they could relate. 

“No clue,” Rue answered, “three years into being in the system, we were doing our weekly meeting with our parents and they were being really awkward the whole time. The next day, our foster parents, Brandy and Jonah were talking on the phone a lot. When we asked what was up, they took us out to a park and told us that our parents had surrendered complete custody to the system. We never saw them again.”

I braced for the pity, but it never came. Instead, Clint laughed and said, “sounds like a couple of people that forgot what parenting is. Known a few of those in my life.”

Wanda, who had been looking at the menu with a bewildered look on her face, cut in, “sorry to interrupt, but I think you’re going to have to walk me through this menu.”

I perked up, ready to end the whole traumatic backstory speil, even if Clint was taking it as well as Natasha had, “well, this isn’t like most restaurants where you order a plate for yourself. Collectively, we order a couple of plates and we all share the food.”

“Yes, but what is all this?”

I took my menu and laid it on the table for everyone to see, motioning towards the two specials, “this is bordog, or an emulated form of it. Our sperm donor used to make the real deal every once in a while. Basically, you take a whole lamb or sheep, cut it open, take out its organs and prepare them, and then put the organs back in with some vegetables and hot stones while torching it. Here they just take some organs and vegetables from a store and cook it inside some leather.”

Everyone looked mildly concerned, especially Clint, though Wanda and Natasha both agreed they’d heard of it before in Russia.

“This is the lamb platter. It’s really just a lamb’s head. Not the biggest fan. Here’s the tsuivan, it’s like Mongolian stir fry with noodles, beef, and vegetables. It’s really popular in Mongolia and I think you guys will like it, too.”

I continued explaining to them everything on the menu, most of which contained organs and I could tell they weren’t appetised. Score. We ended up getting the tsuivan, khorkhog, batan, khuushuur, and banshtai tsai. Only the khorkhog and batan had organs in them.

We’d forgotten that Wanda was also from a place with heavy Russian influence and Natasha _was_ from Russia, where they also ate offal. Not as much of a reaction from them as we’d expected. Though, they really only ate tongue and liver so they were still a little grossed out at the idea of the udleg, which was organs cooked inside stomachs. 

What I didn’t understand was why Clint seemed to have the same level of disgust as Natasha and Wanda. As far as I knew, he was from America.

“I’m upset,” I announced, “I get why Natasha and Wanda aren’t as grossed out about this as the majority of American’s are. What I don’t get is why Clint isn’t.”

Clint let out a thunderous laugh, “is that the only reason why we came here?”

“Well, that might have been the main reason, but we had other reasons.”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

I ignored that, “so why?”

“While I’ve never been to Mongolia, I’ve been to a lot of places with a lot of weird food. While this doesn’t take the cake, it’s still not my prefered dinner plan.”

“Yeah, at least Mongolians don’t eat fried butter.”

We continued like that for a while and I found that Wanda wasn’t actually shy, just a quiet person in general. It occured to me that since she joined the Avengers, I hadn’t heard a lot about her from the Avengers obsessed fans. I always thought it was because she was a girl from Transia—a country with heavy tensions with America—though I realized that it was probably because she made few public statements. 

I wondered how she’d come to be part of the Avengers. Her story was never told to the public, as far as I knew, and she seemed a lot younger than she did on the TV. 

When the food came out, Chimgee brought her twenty year old son to help serve, but we all knew it was to catch a glimpse of the two punk girls they’d known for years sitting casually with some Avengers. The two fangirled to us in Mongolian before excusing themselves to the back. 

Rue reintroduced the dishes to everyone, the noodles were the tsuivan, the khorkhog was the one that looked slightly like pot roast, the batan was the soup, the khuushuur were the meat pockets, and the banshtai tsai was the dumplings in the milk tea. 

“Before we start,” Rue plucked one of the stones from the khorkhog after I did, “you’re supposed to take these stones and pass them between your hands like this. It’s supposed to give you good health or something? I don’t remember.”

Everyone followed suit, with Natasha burning herself because her stone was too hot, a weakness I’d never thought I’d see from someone with such a badass reputation.

The portions were small to accomodate for the large amount of food we got, save for the khorkhog which was always more than anybody could eat. Surprisingly, Wanda really liked the khorkhog despite it being full of several different organs. Clint on the other hand, piled up on the tsuivan and Natasha seemed to favor the banshtai tsai.

By the time everyone was full, the only thing left was some khorkhog, which was far better than any turnout with the Schuckers or Thompsons. We took home the leftovers for Rue and I to battle out who got to eat it for lunch the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To anyone wondering, the fact that Rue and Rose lived in a ger as pasturalists in the 21st century sounds outlandish, but surprisingly a lot of Mongolians still do it. If you're interested in learning about it, I'd suggest watching Artger's videos (but only the ones with Nargie in them because he's cool). The channel has helped me a lot with understanding modern Mongolia even if it's just a food channel.


	10. Theatre in the Theater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long, got really into this one fanfic that made me /sob/ and I spent all of Easter painting bunnies, lillies, and crosses for family members.
> 
> I would also like to say that this is bordering on 60 pages in google docs. How?

The next day, the interview we did with the reporters came out and was all over the radio. It seemed every channel had to talk about it at least once, not to mention all those Avengers fan blogs and podcasts. More people than usual stared at me in the hallway, some even going out of their way to try to stop me in the middle of the crowded walkway.

At the beginning of each class, people crowded around me like magnets. I approached their questions in my standard ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude, though their stares made me anxious. I could handle people staring at me because of the way I dressed, but when I knew that they knew about my home life, I just wanted to disappear. Still, I kept my confident bravado that I always had.

My friends made it better, though. We barely talked about the Avengers, and when we did, we were making fun of them. Instead we talked about Luis’ crazy little brother or DeShawn’s homophobic family that are scared he’ll turn trans if he wears makeup. We made fun of the people that were only interested in us since the news came out, calling them snobbish assholes that only cared about climbing the social hierarchy.

The rest of the week went by about as well as it could have. There were no serious mental breakdowns or panic attacks, aside from crying silently in my room Tuesday night from being seriously overwhelmed.

But then there was this growing feeling that I was being watched. I wanted to say it was because of the increasing number of reporters we had to push through to get home or the stares of people that passed by us, but it didn’t feel like either of those. It was more like the feeling I’d had my first night in the tower, like someone was watching and waiting. Waiting for an opening to get me.

I never voiced these concerns to anyone except my therapist, who told me it was probably a just a delusion caused by all the things happening around me. It didn’t feel right, but then again every time my therapist told me something was a delusion it didn’t feel right. It was the nature of the damn things. So, I brushed it off as best as I could and continued about my life.

But finally it was Friday and school was out. The horrendously long week was over and we had planned to see The Newsies with Natasha that night. And then Clint and Wanda had wanted to tag along, who then told Steve about it.

We had the director’s contacts because we’d done plays with him, so we messaged him to give a heads up, figuring it was better if they shat themselves a few days before the play rather than ten minutes before it started. From what Eli and Adrian said, everyone was at least a little hysterical. In hindsight, we probably shouldn’t have picked opening night to go.

I was wearing the same burgundy Gorilla Biscuits crop top Rue had worn our first day at the tower, as we only had ten shirts between us. Natasha said she’d take us shopping on Saturday. I hadn’t worn the shirt since I’d dyed the ends of my hair red a little over a week ago and I liked the way the colors matched. 

Deciding to have a red theme, I decided to wear dramatic, bright red eyeshadow. Rue and I traded industrial piercings, her standard bar with a bulb on each end for my arrow shaped one. 

Rue wore a black Cream Abdul Babar shirt, which was a punk metal band popular only in the Tallahassee scene, the small capital of Florida where Eli and Adrian grew up before moving to the Big Apple.

We both threw on our jackets, as the theater often got cold when you weren’t running around on and off stage, and just out of the comfort of wearing something that felt so familiar while going to see a play with the fucking  _ Avengers. _

We drove in two cars and although we didn’t mean it to be this way, one had the two guys in it and the other had us girls. The last minute before leaving, Wanda told us she didn’t know how to do makeup aside from eyeliner, so Rue and I gathered some supplies to do a look that was more common for teens than our usual look.

The car ride wasn’t long, so we had to work fast, bombarding her with questions like “which color” and “how big should the wings be.” To the last one, she answered with “what are wings?”

She seemed unsure of how we’d make her look, obviously not wanting the punk aesthetic we had going on, though as it became apparent we weren’t going to go overboard, her increased confidence was apparent. 

And adults say that makeup lowers self-esteem. 

  
  


We’d arrived at the theater five minutes until house opened, meaning we weren’t allowed to enter the actual theater and had to hang out in the lobby. The director came to meet us when he saw we were there, looking absolutely starstruck. 

“Hey Josh,” Rue was the first to approach the director, “how’s it going?”

He chuckled and shook his head like he couldn’t believe what was happening and I didn’t blame him, “everyone’s nervous. I mean  _ everyone. _ ”

“Even Blair,” I balked. 

Blair was the girl that decided to take me on and taught me how to do sound. She was probably the only person in the world that would ever trust a twelve year old alone with a sound system, even if the said twelve year old had been under their apprenticeship for over a year. 

“Blair has balls of steel, she doesn’t count.”

“Yeah, fair enough.” 

When house opened, we found our seats to put our things down and then I made my way over to Blair. She was a tall, sturdy, red headed woman that held herself with more confidence than any person I’d seen that had gone through the shit she had. 

She didn’t talk a lot about her past, but from what I’d gathered, her parents had disowned her when she came out, insisting that she was an abomination of nature and had no respect for Jesus. I assumed it was partially in spite of this accusation that she found a way to pay herself through a theology major and founded a small LGBT friendly church.

I couldn’t form words as to how much I respected her. 

For once in the whole week, I had a conversation with someone that, despite having not seen me for a few weeks, hadn’t said a thing about the Avengers. If it weren’t for the fact that she was always up to date on the news and that we literally brought the Avengers  _ with us _ , I would have thought that she didn’t even know. 

Of course, she never mentioned it until Steve literally came up to us, probably bored from sitting for so long. 

“Hello,” she introduced herself, polite as ever to any stranger, “I’m Blair.”

“Blair?” Steve blinked, making sure he didn’t hear her wrong and I realized that he’d probably never encountered anyone like Blair before, though I set an explanation off for later. 

“Yes, I understand you guys have taken in the Sarnais?”

It took him a moment to realize that she was talking about Rue and I, as we were rarely ever referred to by our last names, “it’s mostly Nat. She’s the foster parent and she makes sure they don’t get into trouble.”

Blair turned to me, “how are you settling in?”

“Girl, everything there looks like it costs more than the Thompson’s house. It’s less settling in and more like becoming accustomed to sleeping on a money pile every night.”

Blair smiled in her all knowing way while Steve looked at me like he really  _ did _ feel me, saying, “trust me, the feeling doesn’t go away as quickly as you’d like.”

“Rosey, at least you know what it’s like to be poor. Makes it less likely for the money to get to your head.”

Catching onto the fact that Blair and I were really close, Steve asked, “so how do you guys know each other?”

“She taught me how to work that _ , _ ” I motioned towards the sound board, “and deal with body packs and everything. I do theatre tech a lot.”

“That’s a good hobby.”

I stifled the urge to scoff. It was obvious he was basing how he thought I acted on how I dressed. He probably thought I beat up nerds and did drugs in my spare time, not theatre. 

“She’s been doing it since she was young. I had to fight tooth and nail to show she’s responsible and mature enough to work alone.”

“How did you find each other?”

I smiled, remembering the situation as Blair described it, “her foster parents were getting her into theatre when she first came to them, but it was obvious she was  _ not _ an actor type. It was torture to get her on stage, so they started to get her to help with changeouts and moving things on stage. But she always hovered around me, asking questions and seeming enthralled by everything. It was only when I learned about her powers did I start actively teaching her.”

Steve smiled as if he were remembering something, too, “yeah, I’m not the actor type either.”

Remembering the World War II Captain America shows, I laughed and said, “no, I don’t think you are, either.”

The lights, flickered, signalling that the show would be starting soon. 

“That’s two ‘til. You should start getting to your seats.”

We said our goodbyes and as soon as we were out of earshot, Steve asked, “is Blair a girl or a boy?”

I laughed, “she’s a girl. Have you ever heard of transgender people?”

Clint eyed us from behind a program, trying to hide a grin while Steve shook his head, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. Is it like transvestites?”

I tried not to choke, “in a way, we just don’t use that word anymore.”

He nodded and I looked for any sign of disgust in his face. When nothing went down, I continued.

“Transgender people are people that were assigned one gender at birth, but later on found out that psycologically, they’re a different gender. So Blair was assigned male at birth but later found out that she’s actually a girl.”

I waited for him to show signs of apprehension or ask if she has a dick or not, but he just accepted it and said, “alright.”

I considered mentioning that she just got on hormones, but that idea was shot down quicker than I thought of it. It was none of his business.

Shortly afterwards, Rue and Natasha came back from talking to Andy. The lights dimmed and Blair’s voice came on through the god mic, “welcome to the Hawks-Mill Community Theater’s production of the Newsies. Please turn off your cellphones and any recording devices you may have on you at this time. There will be a fifteen intermission about an hour into the show. Thank you and enjoy the show.” The curtains opened and the band started playing the overture.

The play was beautiful, with a towering unit set and actors that looked like they liked doing musicals more than anything in their life, unlike most people that were paid to perform. Because I knew a lot of the actors and had seen them perform so many times, I could tell that they were nervous, though it wasn’t obvious enough to be seen by the untrained eye. Most of the nervousness had gone down only halfway through the second song. 

It wasn’t long before I noticed the feeling of being watched come back. It was stronger than it had ever been before. It was like they were right behind me, staring at the back of my head, ready to snatch me up. Telling myself that it was just a delusion, that it was nothing to worry about, only helped a little and the only way I was able to relinquish the fear was to force myself to focus on the famously intricate choreography.

Eli and Adrian’s brother, Marco, seemed in his element. His part didn’t call for the rigorous dancing that the other newsies had but he still stood out, being the cutest one on stage. He was a very good actor for his age, feeling his part and the emotions that his character, Les, felt. 

By intermission, the feeling of being watched had gone down. Natasha seemed to be enthralled by the prospect of a story playing out right in front of her and Steve was going on about how one of the outfits wasn’t historically accurate, which made sense—the program said that the customer was Hannah Dickens, a woman that had more of a taste for fantasy clothing than historical. 

Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I nearly fell out of my chair from fear, but when my head snapped towards the tapper, I was met with the face of Eliana.

“Jesus fuck, Eli. I nearly shat myself.”

From his seat, Steve called out, “language.”

“Sorry,” I called out behind me but made a face to Eli and I had to put up a sound barrier so he couldn’t hear our giggles.

I pointed Rue in the direction of Adrian so she knew he was there and Eli and I started our conversation up.

“I didn’t see you before the play. Where were you?’

“Well,” he started, “Michael decided he needed a shower before he left and then proceeded to take the longest shower in the world. We got in right as the overture ended.”

“Oh my god that sounds so much like Michael.”

“Who’s this?” Natasha appeared behind me and I jumped again. 

“Oh, uh, this is Eliana. She’s my girlfriend.”

“Well, I can say that you two certainly look like it.”

Eli snorted, “was it the clothes, the way we talk to each other, or just because you’re a spy?”

“It was Rue telling me that the only other punk people in here would be you two’s boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“So it was the clothes.”

I snorted.

“How long have you known each other?”

“Since I moved here from Florida in the middle of sixth grade. So that’s… almost four years.”

We maintained awkward conversation for an insufferable amount of time until Natasha moved over to Rue and Adrian. When she left, we both gave each other looks that said “please kill me.”

“You know,” Eli pulled me away from the earshot of the other Avengers, “for a spy, she’s terrible at small talk.”

“Oh my god, you should meet Bruce. I swear he has a mental breakdown every time he talks to me. I’m not sure if it’s Symphony or just pure anxiety.” 

She laughed, then turned to the curtain and looked at the doors that went backstage, “you know, this really means a lot to Marco.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, and while I know you hate your situation—trust me I would, too—you should try to look at the bright side.”

I huffed, “I dunno man. There’s more people that want to know about my life now than I’ve probably ever met. So many people want me to join this superpower suicide squad, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason Natasha even cares about us in the first place. And then there’s the fact that I don’t want to tell everyone that my parents have fucking abandoned me and I’ve deafened my own sister.”

“Look, Rosie. Most people only see you as Symphony, but I feel like Natasha wouldn’t want to  _ adopt _ you guys if she wanted you just for Symphony. Don’t you guys have to be with her for a year before she can adopt you? It will be three months until Rue becomes an adult.”

Eliana was always good at making a point; she could always see the bigger picture, even when it came to her own life. Annoyingly, she was always correct. 

“Yeah, at least then I’ll have someone help pay my way through college. Someone wit dat doe,” I made some money signs and giggled.

She pat me hard on the back, “now ya got the spirit, boy. Now, go off and see the world!”

“Dude, now  _ you’re _ the one that’s killing me.”

The lights flickered.

“Damn, I guess Natasha really did hold us for a long time. Should I go back to my seat?”

“Naw,” I said, “just sit with me until the lights go out. I want to be away from them as long as possible.”

  
  


It seemed like the second half of a play was always somehow better than the first half. The world is in place, all the characters have been introduced, and often times the audience is left on a cliffhanger during intermission. Even during Spamalot, where the second half has even less plot than the first, it still had better jokes, funnier songs, and a more interactive audience. 

The Newsies was no exception. If I thought the first half had amazing dancing, plot, and emotions, the second half was through the roof. I made sure to let the actors know, being that some of them had been in the last production of Newsies and it was a trainwreck. But they had eyes for the Avengers, like everyone. Well, everyone except Blair, who treated them more or less like any the other two foster families I’d been in.

We congratulated Marco, with Lucia and Michael giving him a bouquet of flowers and a little slip of paper that read “go-to-whichever-restaurant-you-want pass.” He was bouncing off the walls with excitement, having done his first non-ensemble character with  _ Captain America _ to witness it. 

There were two other directors there, Sarah and Sara, a lesbian couple who were in the unfortunate situation of being married to a person with the same name. To alleviate the confusion, we just called them H and A. We’d never worked with them, but we’d talked to each other a few times and had heard great things about them from everyone that had worked with them.

They asked us if we were doing a play at the moment, to which we answered no. Rue and I had both gotten C’s on our progress reports and the Thompsons wanted us to bring up our grades. Our grades had since leveled out and we could join back into the theatre scene.

Apparently, they were directing the play One for the Road by Harold Pinter, and they wanted to know if Rue and I could do the lights and sound for it. We’d have to be there next weekend and Wednesday, then Hell Week would start the Saturday after that with the play running Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for three weeks. It was perfect because Hell Week would be during our Fall Holiday. We just had to ask Natasha.

“Before you ask her,” Sarah said, “we just need to let you guys know something about it: it’s rated R.”

Rue paused, “it’s not like Hair, right. No naked people?”

Sarah snickered, “no, but it has rape and murder in it. All off stage, but they do talk about it. A lot.”

I laughed nervously, wanting to get the part but still wondering, “why would you ask me to do it?”

Sara scratched the back of her neck, “well, we were thinking about doing an afterschool program for kids in middle school, teaching them little parts of all the different parts of theatre before having them do a play. We just want to know what it’s like to work with you before hiring.”

If Rue and I didn’t want to beg Natasha to do the play, we did now. We rushed over to her with the Sara(h)s in tow, explaining the situation to her. Surprisingly, she said she’d be fine with it if she could read the script and it wasn’t too graphic. Relieved and having about as much energy as Marco after that, we hopped into the car and drove off. 

  
  


I slept soundly for the first time since rooming 90 floors above ground. I’d been having dreams about zombies for the whole week, and that night wasn’t different in that aspect. What was strange, was they weren’t chasing me in massive hordes, instead it was a normal dream. Every once in a while, a zombie would show up in a car or behind some door, but instead of them hunting me down, I just closed the door on them or shoved them out of the car. 

  
  


I was ripped out of my sleep when my breathing was cut off. My eyes flung open to see four dark figures in my room and before my sleep-ridden mind could comprehend anything, my hands were behind my back and the sound of a gun cocked right before something cold pressed against the back of my head.

A deep, hushed voice growled in my ear, “you scream, you die.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I was in the zone, my dog felt the need to help me, so she typed this out while trying to eat my nose: ‘;’’looop[;/’[‘;/


	11. Kidnapping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah sorry about that cliffhanger last chapter but I have another cliffhanger for you lol

A deafening screech ripped through my room, shattering any glass that was unfortunate enough to be too close to it. There was a bang from behind me and my right leg went numb save for what felt like a period cramp in my thigh. Another scream, one that I didn’t recognize as my own but still came from my mouth, tore through my body as I fell. I directed it toward the attackers as best as I could in my panicked state and I could’ve sworn I could  _ see _ the sound waves pulsating. 

All of the figures in my room cowered away, shielding their ears as best they could from the piercing sound while my door slammed open. I was revving up to scream in that direction, when Natasha’ss voice broke through from the silhouette in the doorway.

“Rose! Don’t scream.”

Before I knew it, Natasha was in the midst of what seemed more like professional acrobatics than fighting in pajamas a minute after being woken up. The men—four of them now that I count—were tied up and unconscious in the corner by the door. I wasn’t even able to process what was happening before she bolted out of the room and into Rue’s.

It was only then that my leg stopped being numb, in fact I was nearly incapacitated by the searing, burning hot sensation. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought my thigh was going to turn into a steaming rotisserie chicken. It felt less like a hot poker was in my leg and more like the hot poker _was_ my leg.

I hissed through my teeth, falling to the ground while barely noticing the small bit of commotion in Rue’s room before Natasha was in front of me. She laid me on the ground from my sitting position and pressed  _ hard _ onto the bullet wound with a cloth. I screamed, but had half a mind to keep it at a somewhat non-intensified level. 

“Rose, listen to me. I know this hurts, but we need to stop the bleeding as best we can until Bruce comes here.”

I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut and clenching my jaw so hard it was a wonder my teeth didn’t crumble. The pressure focused the pain and I wondered how there could be anything that hurt more than this. 

Clint, of all people, entered the room, with a trembling Rue in tow, who sported no injury that I could pick up on but was wrapped in the soft gray comforter from her bed. A similar one from my bed was draped over me.

Natasha looked at Rue, saying something to her, who then signed something to Clint. It registered that I must have blown his hearing-aids while freaking out. As if it were as normal as pulling a child throwing a trantrum from a restaurant, Clint dragged the four unconscious attackers out of the room.

Something about the way Rue approached me seemed almost animalistic. That wasn’t to say she seemed dangerous, but more like she was a scared and emaciated dog trying to get food from a person without getting too close. She obviously wanted to get close to me, make sure I wasn’t dead, but at the same time there was  _ so much blood. _

I’d always joked that waking up after getting my period was like a crime scene, but that was just a drop compared to this. I could only see a fraction of it from my laying down position, but Natasha and I were practically bathing in it.

Eventually Rue had made her way to my side, combing the strands of hair that were sticking to my sweaty forehead and tracing shapes into the shaved half of my head. After getting a closer look, I could see that she had a black eye in the works with the swelling circulating around the lid as the pinks turned red, and the red would soon turn into nasty shades of purple and black.

Bruce came in like a hurricane of medical supplies. He handed Rue an ice-pack for her eye and got to work on me, first putting what looked like a weird velcro belt above the bullet wound that cut off circulation, and then wrapping gauze around the wound. He walked over to the doorway where he grabbed the cot that he’d brought with him and brought it closer. 

Bruce said something to Natasha, who then said something to me in a soothing and hushed voice, but I didn’t have the energy to process what she was saying. The comforter was pulled away and two sets of hands started to lift me from the ground. 

Nausea twisted my guts into knots and a strangled moan flew from my mouth. I was lifted far, far up and then brought to the right. Every movement was torture, swirling at my insides like a brewing storm. It seemed like they were trying to jostle me as much as possible until—

Vomit splattered on the carpet. 

I was quickly placed on the cot and the bloody comforters were draped over me once more. We ran to an elevator, where the downwards motion made my body confused as to whether I wanted to vomit again or fall asleep. 

I was unsure if the pain would let me sleep but I wanted to be relieved of it, at least for the time being. So, I set myself on trying to fall asleep. Though, once my eyes were closed a warm, calloused hand tapped on my cheek until I opened my eyes again, Natasha was hovering over me.

“I’m going to need you to keep your eyes open.”

I gave an annoyed grunt and closed my eyes again.

The tapping came back, firmer this time. 

“Rose, I need you to stay awake.”

God, I just wanted the pain to stop. I needed something to end the fire in my thigh. Still, I kept my eyes open.

Outside, we were met by the flashing red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles. I was transported into another cot where they wheeled me into an ambulance. 

  
  


The rest of the night was even more of a blur than what had already happened. All I could process was the bright lights of the ambulance, the vertigo that washed over me even though I’d been good about taking my medicine, the pain that never seemed to stop. That was my whole world for a stretch of time… time that didn’t even seem to work linearly. 

It felt like they had started cleaning the wound before they even removed Bruce’s bandaging. The time they took me out of the ambulance seemed to have never even happened. One moment I could feel them park, the next I was about to go under anesthesia.

  
  


Waking up was a slow process, slower than what they showed in movies. First came the dreams, stranger than any fever dreams I’d ever had. Creatures with faces like a Francis Bacon painting and limbs as thin as twigs but longer than fences scurried in my direction as gunshots rang out in the distance like fireworks. 

Then the dreams started to merge with reality as they became calmer. There were little girls jump-roping and playing hopscotch talking about Hydra, social workers, and spouting a whole lot of medical jargon. 

There were multiple times that I woke up, having no recollection of ever doing so just knowing that I had. I hadn’t forgotten about what had happened and the painkillers I was on made me nauseous and tired, but despite this, I still felt really silly and I laughed at my own jokes that made no sense at all. 

Rue was always there when I woke up, at first curled up in a chair or right by my bed, humoring my nonsensical ramblings but by the time I was becoming more lucid, she had found comfort sleeping in a small cot the nurses had provided her.

Natasha wasn’t there very often at first, but the more I woke up, the more often she was in the room. There was once I’d woken up to her on the phone and she walked out the moment she noticed I was awake. 

There was finally a point where the anesthetic had worn out and I was as lucid as I could be while still on the painkillers. The clock said it was 6 o’clock and it took me a moment to realize that the sun coming through the window meant it was the afternoon. I was alone, which surprised me. I hadn’t woken up alone the whole time, even if I was just accompanied by a sleeping Rue. 

A nurse walked in, greeting me and making small-talk as she checked my vitals. She was beautiful and nice, but it all felt fake. Instead of her sweetness being like warm honey, where the saccharine would encompass me in its heavy golden richness, it was more like splenda, where you could taste the slightest bits of sweetness but it was overshadowed by a bitter aftertaste. 

I asked her how my leg was, and she said it’d be fine. Once everything had healed, I‘d be able to walk normally and the real emergency the night before was how much blood I’d lost. She told me I’d almost gone into hypovolemic shock, whatever that was, but the blood transfusions fixed it.

When she left, I didn’t have much time to twiddle my thumbs before Rue and Natasha entered the room with Chick-Fil-A bags. They both seemed surprised so I shot them some lazy finger-guns to get them to come in quicker. 

“You guys better have brought me something.”

Rue flashed me a smirk that didn’t reach her eyes, looking like she needed to be the one in the hospital bed, “you think we’d let you eat hosptial food while we’re over here tasting this deliciously homophobic chicken?”

I shrugged, not knowing how to continue the bit. They handed me a box with a chicken sandwich in it and I immediately found it difficult to eat in my laying down position, but I managed.

To say it was tense was an understatement and I could tell I wasn’t the only one that was exhausted, though Natasha was the best at hiding it. It didn’t seem like she was  _ trying _ to hide it per se, but more like she was doing it out of pure habit. Like how Andrea, my friend that was on food stamps, acted when her dad had to have his leg amputated after years of knowing it would come eventually

They looked at each other as if giving themselves permission to talk before Natasha spoke up, “Rose, I haven’t been telling you everything you should know and I think it’s time to end that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about that splenda rant, we had a sweet potato casserole for Thanksgiving and the yams had splenda in it and I was like "this could be a metaphor"


	12. The Secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I meant to have a whole other scene in this chapter but I didn't want to keep you guys waiting any longer on that cliffhanger.

I chewed at the inside of my lip, the beeping of the heart monitor sped up for a small moment, “what is it?”

There was a sigh and I noticed how Rue kept her eyes low, almost as if she were cowering from the truth, whatever it was. I thought about my fear of being taken in by the Avengers just to be a super-soldier and I thought about how Blair, Brandy, and my therapist had told me that they weren’t realistic. I wasn’t sure which one to believe.

“That social worker that brought you, he told you that you guys have been under S.H.I.E.L.D’s surveillance since you’ve been in the foster care system, correct?”

I nodded.

“That’s not because we wanted you to someday be a part of some super-soldier elite league or something, but because we knew that you could become a serious threat.”

I eyed her wearily while attempting to bite into the sandwich without the contents spilling onto my face. We knew we could be a threat, especially with Symphony. I’d known since I’d deafened Rue, but what did that have to do with the weird good-morning assault?

It dawned on me. The screams. They were the loudest I’d ever gone and there was no doubt that I’d not only done significant damage to the Avenger’s Tower, but also caused a good amount of panic for the people that were close by.

“Nick Fury himself appointed people to check up on you every once in a while, but nothing too bad seemed to come up, nothing that was too difficult to take care of.”

I shivered at what “take care of” meant. How had they been manipulating my life?

“Things only became scary around a year ago when Hydra learned about you.”

My blood froze, remembering the terrible experiments they were notorious for creating, namely on Bucky. Apparently, he lived in the tower, yet I hadn’t seen him once. Steve said he rarely left except for therapy appointments, instead sticking to his bedroom, a library, and his and Steve’s training room. 

Of course they’d want us, we were practically pre-made super-soldiers ready to be morphed into whatever brainless, blood-thirsty warrior they wanted us to be.

“They upped their guard on you, but otherwise did nothing. They were in an agreement that it was best if you two had as normal of a life as possible until the danger got too high. But on the Friday of last week, Hydra found an opening and made an attempt. A really good one, too.”

I thought back to that night. It’d been an unyieldingly terrible night, having had an enormous homework load and then the Thompson’s other foster child—a twelve year old that had been taken from his drug abusing mother just a month beforehand—was having a particularly bad day. The poor kid’s mom was having a relapse, and out of fear of his mom losing custody forever, he’d tried to run away to her house. It was an exhausting night with enough stress, social workers, and police to last a lifetime. 

It only took a moment for a few things to string together. The police had asked an enormous amount of questions about a kidnapping. I’d thought it was standard, but we’d been through something similar in the Schucker’s house with only a few questions about kidnapping. 

“S.H.I.E.L.D. ended the situation before you two could notice anything really suspicious. We told your social worker what had been happening and she felt it was necessary to place you somewhere that’s better guarded.”

“And how come they’ve only been able to reach us while we’re in this ‘better guarded’ place?”

Natasha seemed to be in no way affected by my glare and gave me a dead serious look that pierced straight into my soul, “this wasn’t Hydra. This was a small underground terrorist ring who had just heard about you through the press. A few of their members work for Stark Industries, which is how they got into the building in the first place. Tony is fixing that at this very moment.”

Scrubbing my face with my hand to shield the fact that I was on the verge of tears, I asked, “why weren’t we told this years ago.”

There was a sad look in her eyes but I could tell that she didn’t feel any regret for them spying on me.

“Both S.H.I.E.L.D. and Child Protective Services were in agreement that it would be unnecessary trauma for you guys to walk around thinking you could be kidnapped at any moment.”

I had to put down the sandwich so I wouldn’t squeeze the contents out of it, “were you even _planning_ on telling us that we were being stalked by random terrorist groups and fucking _Hydra?_ ”

“We were going to tell you when things got too serious,” her voice was sickeningly calm and it made me want to slap her in the face.

“Oh, so Friday wasn’t serious enough for you!?”

“Rose, we had no indication—”

I turned to my sister, who had been sulking in the uncomfortable looking recliner with her chicken nuggets, “Rue, are you even hearing this bullshit?”

“Rose,” my sister’s tone had no life in it, while her eyes were downcast, looking even more pitiful with her black eye, “just stop.”

“Stop!? You want me to stop!? She said they had _no indication_ that things were serious after a fucking kidnapping attempt. She only told us after I got _shot._ ”

“You need to—”

I was done. I was exhausted and the painkillers were making me loopy and I was done. So I put up a hermit sound barrier and all sound was washed out. No sound reached the hospital bed and no sound left it. I couldn’t roll over with my leg, so I just turned my head so I couldn’t see them talking.

I waited a good long time before sneaking a glance at them. Rue was crying and Natasha was awkwardly comforting her, obviously not knowing how to deal with teenage emotions. Guilt chewed at me but it was the anger that overwhelmed my consciousness.

How could Rue trust that woman after she kept something so detrimental from us? Even the so-called ‘good guys’ had been spying on us since day one in the foster care system. Why? Because an eight year old, not even four foot tall self was so dangerous they needed the world’s strongest security agency to spy on me.

It was only when a nurse came in to check my vitals did I take down the sound barrier. She told me someone would come to change my bandages and tell me about my plan. When she left, Natasha said my name. I could have pretended to’ve had my sound barrier up, but my head turned to her before I thought of it.

“Rue and I talked and decided that we’re going to come home to the tower to sleep as long as you’re alright with that.”

I huffed, “as long as my girlfriend can visit at some point.”

She smiled, relieved, “of course. We have extra security here so we’ll tell them someone’s coming to visit. We’ll stay until that nurse comes.”

I grunted acknowledgment, not wanting to seem like I had forgiven her, but at the same time not wanting to seem too much like a bitch, “thanks…” we sat for a moment before I realized I was missing something, “do you have my phone?”

Rue pulled out a bag that was slouched next to her recliner, ruffling through it before procuring the cellphone I’d bought with my foster kid allowance. I could see Natasha eyeing the cheap device, probably thinking the things rich people thought about when they saw poor people things. 

I had multiple friends that had blown up my phone with messages, but from Eli I only had one, _“text when u can”_. Unlike a lot of my friends, she wasn’t one for theatrics and she knew that when a crisis happened with me, I didn’t like to be swarmed with messages. 

My reply was _“plz come over in about 30 mins”_.

Her response was nearly immediate, _“will do. can u talk to Andrea, she’s freaking out?”_

_“yeah, if she says shes open, can you pick her up on the way here?”_

_“ya”_

Andrea was my best friend—besides Elianna but she was in a different category—and she got really protective whenever something happened to any of her friends. The best way to calm her down was for her to know every part of my situation so her mind wouldn’t have to sit on the worst case scenario. 

I went to Andrea’s contacts, which contained 17 unread messages starting at _“omg I heard what happened”_ and ending with _“sorry ur probs asleep just text me when ur awake”_ with a whole bunch of panicking and “love you”s in between. 

At the bottom of all that, I texted, _“hey, are you open?”_ and then _“bc if you are eliannas gunna pick you up in 30 mins to bring you to the hospital”_.

Her response was a hastily typed out _“YES”_ so I went over to Eli to update her. After that, I went to each of my other friends that had texted me to assure them that I was fine and I was on enough drugs that I couldn’t feel my leg if I wanted to. I told them nothing about the spy situation and dodged their questions with half-hearted jokes. 

The nurse came in to tell me in depth what happened with my leg while redressing my leg. It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would, in fact it didn’t hurt at all. My leg was completely numb throughout the whole process. I couldn’t see the wound because it was on the back of my thigh and while I was itching to know how it looked like, I was relieved in case I couldn’t handle the sight of it.

The nurse said that I almost lost enough blood to go into hypovolemic shock, which he explained happened when you lose so much blood that it makes it hard for your heart to pump blood. He said I was given a blood transfusion and they were able to pull out the bullet without any complications. 

I would be able to leave the next morning because the Avengers had a personal hospital so they didn’t have to deal with doctors and hospitals too often, which explained why Bruce had all the professional looking stuff. The reason we didn’t stay in the tower in the first place was because it didn’t have the supplies necessary for surgery or blood transfusions, two things that they knew right off the bat were going to be absolutely necessary.

I’d only be given antibiotics on the way out, as Natasha assured him that we had enough bandaging and painkillers to last a lifetime. 

Only a few minutes after the doctor left, Rue and Natasha were gone as well, leaving me alone with my phone. I created a group chat with Andrea and Elianna, calling it “The Traumatic Triad” and texted out, _“updates?”_

 _“Parking suks”_ , Andrea replied, then a pop-up told me that she was trying to videocall. I accepted of course, though kept the camera off, and I was greeted with the face of Andrea from the perspective of her crotch.

“I hate New Yawk,” she started in an overexaggerated Boston accent she’s picked up from her mom, “is thah ahmpit of Amerika. I need tah go back tah the Hub.”

Eli, who was driving, came in with her own accent, the thick Peruvian accent that her abuelita had, “look at dis _choro_ . We could have parked but _el tonto_ took it. _Es robado!_ ”

“We could have pawked but they took it from us. Weah jus’ tryin’ tah see owa litta chowdahead an’ they be takin’ owa spwots.”

I cackled. It felt good to have Andrea and Elianna to talk to. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to cheer me up or they were just being silly, but my mood had lifted significantly in just a few seconds. 

The search for a parking spot went on for a while, though I had a feeling they were in the lower levels of the parking garage. Both of the girls continued with their Peruvian to Bostonian conversation while I listened with a huge grin on my face, occasionally imputing my two cents. 

At some point, though it hadn’t been that long, Andrea’s character took a turn from road-rage to sadness, and she was fake crying.

Her hand was scrubbing away imaginary tears, “this is it. We’ll nevah be able tah see owah litta chowdahead evah again. We jus’ wanted tah comfaht her aftah awl she’s been through… seen her leg one last time befah it went tah thah choppah—”

“Stop it _pendejo_ , I found one. _Tu eres huevon._ ”

The car was parked, but that was only half the journey. They had to actually find me. 

That adventure was even more entertaining than watching them try to park. They’d slipped from their accents and into acting like they were gamer YouTubers that were trying to get to a hidden area that had a rare item. I was wheezing by the time they entered my room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The accent thing is based off of something my older sister does. Her accents rotate yearly and range from old southern lady to Itanian to a latino (we used to live in Orlando, where there are a lot of people from South America). While I was writing a really emotional part, she came into the living room just to yell at me in a Boston accent to tell me how good her lobsters taste. It was terrifying.


End file.
